Soulstar

Kingston Cycle, Book 3

By: C. Polk

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

With Soulstar, C. L. Polk concludes her riveting Kingston Cycle, a whirlwind of magic, politics, romance, and intrigue that began with the World Fantasy Award-winning Witchmark. Assassinations, deadly storms, and long-lost love haunt this thrilling final volume.

For years, Robin Thorpe has kept her head down, staying among her people in the Riverside neighborhood and hiding the magic that would have her imprisoned by the state. But when Grace Hensley comes knocking on Clan Thorpe's door, Robins days of hiding are at an end. As freed witches flood the streets of Kingston, scrambling to reintegrate with a kingdom that destroyed their lives, Robin begins to plot a course that will ensure a freer, juster Aeland. At the same time, she has to face her long-bottled feelings for the childhood love that vanished into an asylum 20 years ago.

Can Robin find happiness among the rising tides of revolution? Can Kingston survive the blizzards that threaten, the desperate monarchy, and the birth throes of democracy? Find out as the Kingston Cycle comes to an end.

©2021 C.L. Polk (P)2021 Recorded Books

Excellent

The entire series had the best readers in the world. The stories are complex and the romance is not over the top. I like the magic bits too and even though there is violence it’s not over dramatized.

the pronoun thing

I realize the author used the switching pronouns to denote a trans character but it made things so textually confusing I have trans friends and they go by their chosen pronouns. They do not switch back and forth . I wish there was a better way to get that across than the confusing switch. Other than that, I enjoyed this whole series and found it very creative. I do wish Grace could have ended it better with her father....he might be in that tree but having to execute your own parent is pretty ghastly and whether deserved or not, I would think that would be haunting in itself.

Good Series

I enjoyed the first book the most, but the series is good. I agree that continually changing pronouns for a main character is silly and meaningless. Use whatever pronouns you choose, but an author doesn't need to flip them around. It draws attention to nothing. Many characters are androgynous in these books.

Mind-blowingly amazing

I have thoroughly enjoyed this whole trilogy, and Soulstar truly stuck the landing for it. If you are looking for a new series, and would like some assurance that you will not become super-invested only to be disappointed by the ending, this is an excellent choice. If you're anything like me, you'll become super-invested and will cheer loudly at the end of the final chapter.

The protagonist has been a side-character in the first two books, who is one of those characters you tend to like because of what you do see of them, while not feeling you know them all that well. That works in Soulstar's favor because, while I think you'd do yourself a disservice to not read Witchmark and Stormsong first, you don't strictly have to. This is the first glimpse given of Aeland and its problems from a Robin's-eye view, so it can also work well as the reader's first glimpse of Aeland at all.

The story itself has a very lot of ground to cover and does it well. The ending of this book on its own and the trilogy as a whole is very satisfying. Most threads are tied off, and the denouement gives insight into how the remaining ones will do so after the tale has ended. And Polk manages to do this without making any of it sound too perfect or too tidy, a trick I'd dearly love to learn.

One of Polk's strengths, as I've seen in this series as well as The Midnight Bargain, is putting characters through some pretty extreme situations that could easily end in tragedy, but instead end in hope. She also takes on some extremely timely topics about race and class and police brutality in a very unapologetic way that is also very, very satisfying to read.

My one quibble about how Robin, in particular, is handled, is the same one I have for the way Doctor Who handled Rory Williams. Nursing is not a consolation career for those who couldn't get into or couldn't afford medical school. I've never met a fellow nurse who has any interest in being a physician because they really are parallel and linked yet different disciplines. Plenty have interest in being primary care providers, as nurse practitioners, but that is a different thing, not a watered-down version of being a medical doctor. Considering most people don't understand that nursing isn't about being physicians' assistants (also its own discipline), this is a minor quibble, though.

Robin Thorpe now joins the short list of awesome nurses in current speculative fiction, alongside Rory Williams and Claire Temple (of Netflix-MCU, not Night Nurse comics, that's a whole blog post unto itself). We need more of these, and I am very grateful to C.L. Polk for creating this character and adding her to this group.

Not as good as first 2

Was very confused with using his/hers/she/him to identify one person. Doesn’t bother me but kinda didn’t have an explanation or reason it just was and I had no idea what was going on at first

Difficult grammar

The frequent change of pronoun reference from masculine to feminine and back again
was distracting and confusing

This wasn't nearly as good as the first two.

The only reason to listen to the book is to find out about what happened to the characters. It was dull and unengaging. My mind wandered. The characters are boring. There is no magic anymore.