All of Our Demise: The epic conclusion to All of Us Villains

Product Information

Six of Crowsby Leigh Bardugo is one of my all-time favorite books. Like All of Us Villains, it is a duology with multiple POVS, morally suspect protagonists, and queer romance. By now, Briony could recite her plan flawlessly. She’d certainly had to explain it to enough people over the past day. But out of everyone she’d tried to convince, Innes felt the most important. Briony, the older of the two, had been raised certain that she belonged at the center of her family’s stories. She was tall and muscular from a life spent in motion, her hands adorned with an arsenal of crystal spellrings whose power few others could wield. There was no challenge she wouldn’t confront to meet her goals. No price she wouldn’t pay for victory. Like, even after Briony’s squad finds out that it is possible to break the tournament, Gavin and Alistair decide to keep playing the cards as originally dealt. Obviously the right thing to do is to work to break the curse and save anyone, but it is impossible to fault the ones who don’t believe in the possible happy ending and can’t bring themselves to throw everything away in futile hope. In fact, Gavin and Alistair are my favorites (honestly, by a wide margin, although I do still like Isobel and Briony), and that’s a testament to how well these books are written: I love these characters even at their worst. The morality here is very, very gray. There are so many people that you’d say are absolutely beyond redemption that somehow manage it… by actively working for it and changing their ways. Carry Onby Rainbow Rowell has a lightly similar magic system, at least as far as spell-naming goes.

All of Us Villains Series by Amanda Foody - Goodreads All of Us Villains Series by Amanda Foody - Goodreads

Briony and Innes had once cherished those stories. They’d been a source of comfort as they grew up shuffled from cousin to cousin after being abandoned as toddlers by their grieving mother. In those tales, Briony wasn’t a lonely little girl whose only real home was her sister. Instead, she cast herself as the perfect Thorburn. The perfect champion. Someone who had proven that she belonged.As well as AoUV, the sequel is told in 3rd person through 4 of the champions (Gavin, Alistair, Briony, Isobel) with POV-less Finley, Reid, and Hendry more or less joining the game - the deadly over 800 years old lasting tournament - and influencing its outcome. Every single character in this book is morally grey, and sometimes downright villainous, but when you are doing wrong for what could ultimately be a good reason, how wrong can it be. How far is too far to go before you cross that point of no return....

ALL OF OUR DEMISE | Kirkus Reviews

The only small complaint I have is that some of the trials can feel a little repetitive. I appreciate that Foody and Herman did their best to make each one distinct, but there’s no getting around the fact that there are seven of them. I like the way that they fit in with the family histories and the ingenuity deployed to solve them all, but I won’t pretend that I wasn’t a little disappointed when I got to a trial chapter because on the whole I found them less exciting and dynamic than the others. All of that changed one year ago, when an anonymously authored book catapulted Ilvernath into the international spotlight.With that, her sister began to climb. Wrought iron lanterns winked at Briony from the stone walls as she followed, as did the Tower’s powerful warding spellstones lodged within the mortar. According to the Thorburns’ many fairy tales, their first champion had embedded the crystals herself to defend against her enemies. I totally fell for All Of Us Villains when it came out last year, and had extremely high expectations for this 2nd book. Yes, I’m demanding, but to my utter relief Foody and Herman totally delivered! Both books in this series easily got five stars from me. It’s been a little while since I’ve been so excited by a new series. I’ve been gong on and on and on about these books to all my friends and coworkers because I’ve had such a blast with them. I love the morally gray characters. I love the creative worldbuilding and magic system. I wish there was more of this series to read even though I’m totally satisfied with what there is and feel that it ended on a perfect note. I am absolutely going to read more from both Amanda Foody and Christine Lynn Herman in the future, and I am absolutely going to keep recommending All of Us Villains and All of Our Demise to anyone looking for exciting YA fantasy. As with the first book, I love how the magic fits in. Most of our remaining characters are cursed, and their various curses are extremely personal, illuminating and challenging them in specific ways. Gavin’s magic is still tied to his life magic; using it causes his extreme pain. It has made him both more powerful and weaker in unexpected ways. He has found a way to siphon life magic from others, which puts him in the morally dangerous position of causing pain to others to relieve his own. Alistair likewise has his monstrousness cursed; the curse Isobel hit him with takes his life slowly, with the curse spreading every time he does something villainous. As a person who has built his identity and reputation on being villainous, and whose current survival—and the survival of his beloved brother—depends on his being able to kill others, this obviously puts him in a precarious position. The way these curses complement each other and force Alistair and Gavin into an uneasy alliance is also really interesting. And Isobel, whose beauty is her armor and whose public face is what has given her a chance in this competition (and reunited her with her father and his side of the family), finds herself turning into a living corpse, devoid of her beauty and even her breath and forced to rediscover herself without it… and come to terms with the fact that her family legacy is a curse. It is all done so brilliantly and beautiful. I seriously can’t shut up about this series. It’s so good. If you loved the dark, foreboding nature of the first book, you’ll absolutely love this one. All your favorite characters return, each one just as morally grey as the last one. They’re all faced with choices they never thought they would have, especially that of ending the tournament forever. Even though there are a lot of points of view in this book, I didn’t feel like any of the characters were more developed than the other. They all felt like well-rounded and complex characters, which is a point for the story! It’s hard to do that with so many different narrators.