Review: Conquering Reality & Other Misconduct by Annette Marie and Rob Jacobsen

Conquering Reality & Other Misconduct (The Guild Codex: Warped #6)
by Annette Marie and Rob Jacobsen

My Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: m/f

Blurb:
Conman, jailbird, rookie, agent, fugitive…I’ve worn a whole lot of labels over the past year. But the Consilium, AKA the heinous secret league of power-hungry psychos that has been covertly pulling the world’s strings for decades, has slapped a few more on me: abnormality, keystone of evil, and my personal favorite, “annoying pest that keeps escaping our clutches.”

I’ve battled empaths, mages, demons, rogues, and an astonishing quantity of bureaucratic nonsense, but the Consilium is by far the biggest and most dangerous enemy I’ve ever had the pleasure of clashing with. On my own, I won’t be able to stop the nefarious tide of influence and control they’re spreading across the mythic world.

But with the help of Lienna Shen and my other allies, I’m hoping to earn a few new titles from my ultra-ornery foe, starting with “giant pain in their collective ass” and finishing with “nightmare they never should have messed with.”

I just need to make sure I don’t add “unintentional bringer of the apocalypse” to my resume in the process.

—
Kit’s journey from conman to international man of mystery rushes to its epic conclusion in the final book of The Guild Codex: Warped. Warped can be read as a standalone series or as part of the larger Guild Codex saga.

My Review

I received a free copy from the authors and voluntarily reviewed it.

I was really excited for this one as its the conclusion to the whole Guild Codex saga. And I started this one not long after I received it. Conquering Reality & Other Misconduct is the last book in Kit’s series as well as a wrap up for the whole universe and it has point of views from not just Kit, but also plenty of other characters.

I have to say I really struggled getting into this book at first. I checked and it’s been 2 years since I read the previous book in this series and I had no clue what had happened and what was going on. It took me a few chapters to slowly start piecing the pieces together, but yeah not a nice feeling and I had wished I had managed to re-read the previous book or have a brief summary of that one first. After that it went a lot smoother and I enjoyed it a lot more.

Kit and Lienna are on the run as they are the most wanted mythics with a big bounty on Kit’s head after what he did in the previous book. The evil organization who is after them is consolidating their grip on the magical police and slowly everyone starts to notice something is amiss. The other characters are slowly figuring out what is going on as well as we get some of their point of views as they deal with what’s going on. I thought the multiple point of views were a nice touch to check in with the other characters, but at the same time it made the story feel a bit more fragmented jumping across many miles and to different characters. And I felt the other point of views did not add as much as I had hoped, except to really emphasize how much bad stuff the bad guys are doing in Vancouver while Kit is in Europe. I did like the scenes where Kit teams up with some of the characters, I liked when Robin and Zylas join a dangerous mission. And it was fun seeing Kit learn something from Saber and Zak.

This is a very action packed finale to the series. I really wanted to love it and while I liked it, there were also plenty of parts where I struggled with it a bit. Kit is becoming super powerful and it just felt a bit much. I really liked his warp powers, but now he is so much stronger and can do so much more and I just did not find it as interesting. There are some interesting scenes with him trying to get the hang of his pwoers which felt realistic. There are also some moments were I did not get why Kit did something and some scenes where either Kit or the bad guys just seemed to do something not so smart that comes back to hurt them.

Another issue is that it just felt a bit too epic, too much action, too many super big stakes and immense consequences. And it just felt a bit much, but that’s probably due to me reading a lot of cozier books with lower stakes. I just missed the softer and gentler moments, I wanted more about the characters, the fun parts and the sweet scenes. Kit is constantly on the run and doing things, which makes sense, but I wanted more of the more normal stuff and seeing him and Lienna spend time together. And I really like these characters and enjoy reading about them, so I just wanted some more of the gentler parts too in this epic series finale.

The big epic battle at the end just felt boring to me and it just felt so over the top. Again this is probably just due to me reading a lot of cozier books recently, but it was just so epic and action packaged compared to a lot of the books I’ve been reading. There were some parts I liked and there is a lot of cool magic use. I liked the epilogue, but even so I would’ve liked a bit more to really show how things end up after that big showdown. And I guess I just wanted to read more about these characters.

Despite my issues this was a compelling read and I wnated to keep reading and see what happened next. I liked reading about all the magical powers and seeing how Kit and all the other characters stood up to the evil organization trying to control the mythic world. There is a lot going on with plenty of danger and some interesting reveals.

To summarize: This book wraps up this series and the whole universe. It is told not only from Kit’s point of view, but has chapters from other characters their points of views. It is a compelling well written ending to the series and wraps things up well. I enjoyed reading it and seeing how Kit handled things, but there were also some parts that didn’t quite hit the spot for me. It had been 2 years since I read the previous book so the first few chapters were a lot of struggling to get back into it. I also struggled with the action packed and epic scale of the book as I’ve been reading a lot of cozier books lately and missed the more character driven slower moments. This book is filled with things going on and plenty of action. I also didn’t really care for how powerful Kit has become and liked his powers in the previous books more, which were already very strong. The big battle at the end felt a bit much to me with a huge scale battle and a lot of action. The ending wraps things up very well and I liked seeing how things got resolved a there’s an epilogue that shows what’s next for Kit and Lienna as well as some of the other characters. I wouldn’t have minded a longer epilogue as it’s sad saying goodbye to these characters and world after all these books.

Links:
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
– Amazon

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.