The Memory of Babel continues about two and a half years after the events of The Missing of Clairedelune. Ophelia has spent her time on Anima trying to research and waiting to hear from Thorn. When Archibald turns up and offers her the chance to go back to the Pole, Ophelia makes the decision to go find some answers on her own.
I think in this edition of the series Ophelia really wants to be seen as an adult and not some child that doesn’t know what she’s doing. The fact that she embarks on the apprenticeship when she gets to Babel even though it pushes her right to her breaking point really shows how much she has evolved over the course of the series. I just wish she would of asserted herself a bit more and didn’t let people get under her skin so much.
Thorn I struggled a little bit with in this book. He is incredibly cold and standoffish when he is reunited with Ophelia and even though he did finally expressed his feelings to her he doesn’t display it. For the majority he is present in the book I get the feeling that he didn’t even miss her at all and the way he spoke to her didn’t really give her cause to express her feelings back to him. He only really opens back up to her after she bears her soul to him and then we finally get some concrete answers to what’s actually going on.
Babel was a completely different setting to the previous Arcs. It definitely made me more invested in the book as I was eager to find out about what prompted Ophelia to come here. We are introduced to a lot of new characters and I appreciated some of the new friendships that were sparked, mainly Blaine and Augustus. I think they are going to have more focus in the coming book!
I was surprised by the direction this book went in. I genuinely thought this was the last book in this series so throughout the course of the story line I was waiting for all the plot points to come together and make sense but it seems as we were getting some answers more questions were popping up. There were certain twists that I predicted from the start but then there were others that completely took me by surprise.
⭐️4/5 stars A slow build but the end ensnared me once again!
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