Wildfire - Ilona Andrews (Hidden Legacy #3)

I have fabulous news for those following this series: we're getting three more books.  But not about Nevada--no no, instead the new ones will take place a few years down the road, and will feature Nevada's younger sister Carolina as the main character.  This is excellent news, not just for fans of the series but for Wildfire itself, because by far the weakest part of the book was the ending, which was wildly incomplete.

This book picks up where the last one left off.  Nevada has to face down that her grandmother, the most powerful truth-oriented mage, Victoria Tremaine, who wants to bring Nevada to heel as a member of House Tremaine.  To ward her off, Nevada could declare her own House Baylor, but it means putting not only herself but her relatives in the spotlight and revealing all of the secrets they've kept so carefully hidden.  And then there's what declaring herself as a House could potentially do to Nevada's relationship with Rogan.  Oh, and you know, the whole thing where people are still trying to bring down the government.  You know, the day to day stuff.

Overall, this book was well-constructed.  The main and subplots tied together well.  Nevada and Rogan's relationship wasn't in the spotlight, but the strain placed on it by their circumstances were evident, and despite a few snafus, they handled things as adults.  There's nothing worse than a romantic conflict that could be resolved by the characters literally talking to each other for five minutes, and that's what Nevada and Rogan did when necessary--talked it out.

Some awesome new aspects of the Hidden Legacy came to light here, too--the history behind siren powers, the people who keep the House records and how they keep people from interfering with trials, a look at how these powers can be applied in the practical world.  For example, the applications of having powers over fungi.  It sounds lame, but when you factor in making them rapidly mutate in the search for new antibiotics, that's suddenly a lot more practical and a lot more profitable.  All of these things play in very well.  But as I mentioned above, this book had a big flaw at the end, and that's that it felt drastically in complete.  The main overarching plot of the series is not resolved at all--which is great now that we're getting three more books, but remember, this was put forth as the last book in a trilogy and those three extra books weren't planned when this was released, which makes a sloppy ending a huge flaw.  There's also an annoying thing with a past love interest (well, not really love interest, but kind of?) of Rogan's coming back up--he's not pursuing her, but she's pursuing him, hard core, and he definitely doesn't shut it down as much as he should have.  You can still care for and support someone while explicitly saying, "There never was and never will be anything romantic between us."

Overall, I did really enjoy this.  I'm glad to see there will be three books about Carolina, because she was definitely my favorite character in these books, and where the authors left her was ripe for development.  But those books are going to be a long time coming, so for now...

4 stars out of 5.