"The stars looked like they were close together, when really they were millions of miles apart. In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach." 
 While this was utterly predictable, it was terrifyingly beautiful. My heart was broken and shattered multiple times and my body ached with sorrow and longing for Mal, for Prince Nikolai, for Alina - and even for the Darkling. I wanted them all to breathe freely and happily, but it was impossible. They were never meant to coexist. 
 Of course there were sacrifices to be made, choices to be taken and lives to be lost. When Alina didn't try to kill herself, she was involuntary killing others, just to succeed. She felt a deep and dark attraction towards power, with a part of the Darkling engraved in her soul. Ironically enough, the way towards peace was paved with death. Amplifiers and bones, beasts from children's stories and monstrous souls, doomed lovers and helpless passion. Ravka is a mythical world with heavy traditions. 
 Perhaps a comparison of Harry Potter's bond to Voldemort is too obvious. Alina and the Darkling are bound together. They long for each other, gravitate towards each other, share powers and dark desires, and while one understands compassion another doesn't. What separates them isn't their needs, it's their actions, the way they perceive love and friendship. And of course the horcrux is there too, sealing Alina's fate from the very beginning. 
 It isn't entirely original, but it works perfectly. I turned each page with a little shiver. 
 "He watches her the way Harshaw watches fire. Like he'll never have enough of her. Like he's trying to capture what he can before she's gone." 
 The epilogue really won me over. While the book ended as I knew it would, the ending came about in an unforeseen way. It was bittersweet, melancholic and mildly tragic. There is no such thing as an easy escape, and scars are eternal reminders. In the end, Alina was forced out of her own humanity and squeezed back into a life that fit her no longer. 
 But perhaps, it really was Nikolai's ending that ruined me. The remaining darkness, hovering over him, over Ravka, left in Alina's very soul, presenting something that could never heal, a wrong that could never be righted. (view spoiler)[While the Shadow Fold is gone, the shadows still remain. (hide spoiler)] 
 The Darkling's characters deepens in this third installment of the series. His story is revealed, and as it turns out Alina isn't the only one who is bound to him by fate. I was in anguish as the Darkling wandered the lonely halls at the Small Palace alone, pining for Alina; wanting her and her power equally. Like calls to like, as the book would so often say, and no one craved a likeness more than the Darkling. Perhaps Alina was always there, a fragment of his imagination, a lonely friend glistening in the dark. 
 "They had an ordinary life, full of ordinary things - if love can ever be called that."