Originally posted on GoodReads.

Synopsis: The Ranger known as Rhett has shut down a terrible enterprise running on the blood of magical folk, but failed to catch the dark alchemist behind it. And now the Shadow refuses to let him rest. Rhett must make the ultimate transformation if he has any hope of stopping the alchemist or fulfilling his destiny; he must become the leader of a new Rangers outpost. To save his friends, and the lives of countless others, he'll first have to lead them on a mission more dangerous than anything they've ever faced.

Rating: 5/5

I figure I've gone on enough about gender and sexuality and how it's discussed in the narrative in the previous two books for this series, so I won't loop back around and bring up things I already brought up (click here and here for my review of Wake of Vultures and Conspiracy of Ravens). There's not as much to go off on a tangent about in Malice of Crows, but I probably still will since Bowen has proved over and over again that she's going to make Rhett's story chock-full of the conversations and issues that should be more present in YA fiction and she sure hasn't backed away from that in this third book.

So, anyway, Lila Bowen continues to be my new favorite author and has even potentially set a new standard that I'm going to judge the YA industry by.

Malice of Crows is hard to get through. Not in the bad way, but in the honest way. Like that conversation you have to have sometime in your life where you're in the wrong and you know it but it still hurts because your feelings of hurt aren't lining up with the fact that you're the one who did wrong to someone else. And just like everyone's going to have that conversation in their lives several times over, Bowen keeps making Rhett's story of finding himself not easy because life sure ain't easy. Those hard conversations aren't easy.

As the third book takes Rhett's company on the road again, following Trevisan after the events of Conspiracy of Ravens, things start to unravel a lot between the crew. Tensions were already building from the love tangle I mentioned in my last review, but they just get higher and higher because, honestly, that's the only thing they can do. Early on in the chapters, Rhett mentions how they're all bickering because it's a "good time" during their travels — because they're on downtime and have time to bicker. In a fight, chasing down monsters, they all work fine together because it's life or death. But when they settle down, all of their issues with each other rear their ugly heads.

And the heads are ugly, but rightfully so. Over the past two books, Rhett's internalized misogyny has popped up a couple of times, but it's never been ugly, just mostly annoying or sad to where I'd shake my head and go "Rhett, you fool" but then keep reading. Rhett has been portrayed as unsympathetic in parts of the past two books, especially in Conspiracy, but he's just downright arrogant and dumb in Malice. Here, the internalized misogyny (without the name itself because the words had yet to be introduced into common vernacular) is brought up by Winifred and Dan, who point out to Rhett that he has to stop "hating himself" and hating that he's "a woman and a monster." He argues that he doesn't, but the siblings counter that he does — he constantly puts Winifred and Cora out of harm's way because he sees them as incapable of defending themselves (a case could be made for Winifred's pregnancy, but still, Winifred would never let anyone tell her what to do) and he sees other monsters as something unnatural to hunt down and kill (whereas he and his friends are the good guys).

Each book Bowen writes in this series deals with something Rhett struggles with big-time, and each book builds upon the struggle of the previous one. In Wake, it was about Rhett accepting his destiny as the Shadow; in Conspiracy, it was about him growing comfortable in his skin as Rhett; and in Malice, it's about how he's dealing with the transformations he's undergone in the past two books. Yes, he's a trans man. But, to Rhett, that means that he hated being designated "a woman" (for lack of better language) and there's so much internalized misogyny that sits inside of those emotions he feels. He never had good female figures to look up to in his life, and he sees that society treats women like crap. But even when capable woman come along like Winifred and Cora, Rhett still automatically believes they need a man's help.

It's such a delight to be reading a series that handles these hard conversations so boldly. Rhett honestly is unsympathetic at many points. He's young, he's uneducated about the world, he's stubborn, and he's frequently a jerk who won't listen to what people tell him (unless it's coming from Sam, usually). He constantly says that he doesn't understand women but then his mind is set on not understanding them so he can't come around and learn. That's good. I'm assuming he'll start to learn more in the next book, but I'm overall so happy that these books even exist.

Bowen writes characters who are genuine and real in the sense that they're both good and bad. They're human. Rhett isn't the clean-cut protagonist who's biggest flaw is having too big of a selfless heart. His biggest flaw is that he's more stubborn than a one-eyed mule, and he wants people to learn how to work with him because he's spent all of his life having to cater to other people's needs and wants, which is unfortunate but it doesn't give him a free pass to brush off his friends or brush off an entire gender just because of his own experiences before.

Plot-wise, I felt the pacing was a little better than Conspiracy and that the characters got to the plot a little faster here than in that book, although I don't think the pacing was as spot-on as in Wake. Not glaring enough to take away half or a full star, though. Malice is a character-driven book, just as the entire series is more about character than plot, I believe. I personally finished this in a day, faster than I did with Wake, because I was just so excited to keep reading and seeing where their chase after Trevisan would take them.

To end on a great note, Rhett's very brief reunion with his mother and brother was my favorite part of the book, and seeing that Rhett's mother, whose name was originally I Will Find Her (as in Rhett, her "daughter"), changed her name to I Found Him... that made me bawl. I have so many emotions, and Lila Bowen knows how to set them all off.

Buddy read with Kirsten as usual.