Review: Quintana of Charyn by Melina Marchetta

Summary

There’s a babe in my belly that whispers the valley, Froi. I follow the whispers and come to the road…

Separated from the girl he loves and has sworn to protect, Froi must travel through Charyn to search for Quintana, the mother of Charyn’s unborn king, and protect her against those who will do anything to gain power. But what happens when loyalty to family and country conflict? When the forces marshalled in Charyn’s war gather and threaten to involve the whole of the land, including Lumatere, only Froi can set things right, with the help of those he loves.

My thoughts

I’ve cried a lot while reading this series but Quintana was the absolute worst because it all came to an end. Bad things happened and good things happened, and no matter which of the two it was, I cried. The last 20% where so hard for me to read because I just couldn’t stop crying. Sometimes I didn’t even know anymore if a cried because I was happy or sad. It was such a huge wave of feels crashing down on me all at once.

This time it wasn’t so much the past of these people that wrecked me, like the earlier books did, but the present. I knew this was Goodbye and I just needed good things to happen and I needed these characters to be okay. Melina Marchetta came up with a lot of new cruel twists to make these characters suffer though. I was never so afraid of an ending of a series. I was scared shitless that this would not end well.

I think this one was different to the other two in a lot of different ways, mostly because this time we didn’t switch characters, but still had to deal with the same problems from the previous book. Even the prologue was different, which made me cry happy tears for once. When it comes to worldbuilding, character development and such it was just as perfect as the previous ones though. All these things she packs into her stories are things people in real life deal with too. It might be without all the magic elements, but this series doesn’t have the most abstract magic system, it’s not too fantastical for you to imagine all this in our own world. These are real problems and they are not just made up to move the plot forward (and crush your heart).

I love these character so very much, this can’t be normal. They might just be fictional characters to others, but to me they became real people I deeply cared about and just wanted to see them happy already. What I deeply love about them is that they are all equals, as in they all fight as hard as they can but are anything but invincible, everyone can take charge, they show emotions, they cry and they have their flaws but still every character is unique. And that makes them real to me.

I still can’t believe that it is over now and that this was goodbye for good. This series’ ending was fucking perfect and I will never get over it. This story and its characters had such a huge impact, I know I will think about it again and again and probably start sobbing again while doing so.