In the twenty-ninth and final chapter of Untold, Jared fulfills his destiny. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to finish Untold.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Lost Love
Holy shit, what an ending.
- “He’d lied to Kami.”
- Just take a moment to watch the first minute of the commission because it’s a perfect example of me realizing just how terribly, horribly wrong I was in the previous review and knowing that I can’t change it. UGH, I WAS SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR FROM THE TRUTH.
- I don’t think this chapter undoes any of the growth that Jared has made throughout Untold, though. If anything, I think this ending solidifies his selflessness, though it’s still imbued with his recklessness. Yes, what Jared does here is impractically heroic, but isn’t that precisely the kind of person he is? Doesn’t he often value other lives so much that he forgets (or refuses) to value himself? Hell, half of his justification for lying to Kami is so that he can make her feel better. Yeah, it’s absurd when you think about it because he’ll end up hurting her in the end anyway. But this is how Jared’s mind works. His understanding of things like loyalty or chivalry or duty are skewed because of the challenging life he’s had. Above it all, he values her life more than one second of his own. He even says that out of the two of them, “[s]he had always seemed like the real one.”
- So, this is the sort of logic swimming through Jared’s head when he returns to Aurimere to rescue Aunt Lillian and Tenri Glass and Jared, you may be a fool, but I still adore you. You big heroic goofball.
- GUESS WHAT IS NOT OKAY
- THE REVEAL THAT LILLIAN PROBABLY EXPRESSED PHYSICAL AFFECTION TOWARDS JARED ON THE NIGHT HE MOVED BACK IN TO AURIMERE.
- 100000000% NOT OKAY.
- However, I was super into the way that Jared used his surroundings to blend in, specifically cloaking himself in darkness and shadows. The magic in this series is so weird, and I’m totally into it.
- I also had to laugh at the image of Jared appearing in front of his mother that way. I know it’s meant to be shocking to her, but he essentially used magic to play peek-a-boo with Rosalind.
- Anyone, there’s literally nothing funny in this book after this point, and good lord, this is dark. Initially, it’s dark because of Jared’s conversation with his mother is just… god. It hurts, you know? I know that we saw a great deal of what it was like for Ash to deal with Lillian’s coldness and rejection, so it’s utterly heartbreaking to read scenes with Jared realizing just what sort of person his own mother is. She is a walking contradiction in a lot of ways. She claims to not want to hurt her sister, but she doesn’t seem to have a problem with Rob’s entire arrangement.
- Bless Jared, then, for realizing that he didn’t need Rosalind to free his mother and walk out of that house with Aunt Lillian. Actually, that is kind of funny because he gets around the complicated magic that the sorcerers set by lockpicking the door. SO GREAT.
- Oh god, so is the identity of Jared’s father a real thing now? MORE THINGS LEFT UNRESOLVED.
- How creepy is that moment where Rosalind insists that “people who can’t do magic…aren’t real”???? Oh my god, she truly believes the nonsense of Rob Lynburn, doesn’t she? Well, at times when it is convenient to her, she does, though she more or less believes in Rob as a person more than his horrifying sorcerer ideals. I mean, she lets Jared take Lillian out of Aurimere to safety, but then lies by telling him, “I want you safe.” She doesn’t want him safe at all. She spares Lillian for a strange reason, but she sets Jared up for failure and betrayal instead.
- WHY ARE THE LYNBURNS SO MESSED UP
- (Wait, I know the answer to that one. Nevermind.)
- Rob. Ugh, I can’t even type his name without wanting to shudder. What he does here is perhaps the most evil thing in this whole series. I don’t use the word evil often in my writing to talk about characterization or behavior, but his horrifying manipulation of Rosalind is without any moral fortitude at all. He treats Rosalind like ab obstacle, not the woman who loves him, and that means she’s disposable. I cannot fucking believe Rob kills her. AND WITH ONE OF THE GOLDEN KNIVES, AT THAT! Oh my god, Jared just watched his mother die. THIS ISN’T OKAY AT ALL.
- (I had no idea the levels of NOT OKAY that awaited me. No idea.)
- Rob and Jared’s fight really is scarier than the battle in the square, and it comes back to a similar theme that’s present in the end of this book: desperation. Jared came to Aurimere without much hope of leaving alive himself, and Rob is well aware that Jared is the only sorcerer left who poses a threat to him. So their fight brims with an intensity that feels final, and really, I should have seen this coming. This is who the fight had to be between in the end. And god, I had hope that Jared stabbing Rob would have given him some power. That was Lynburn blood on that knife… except I was wrong, wasn’t I? Rob easily overpowers Jared and begins to suck the life out of him, and it just feels terrible in every way, and then Sarah Rees Brennan drops this:
- “He heard Rob’s voice, low in his ear. ‘I know just the place for you.’ “
- That switch to Jared’s perspective some time later is EXTREMELY jarring because… what? Rob didn’t kill him?
- oh
- oh god
- “He was trapped, in an enclosed space he didn’t know where, in a little pocket locked away from magic.”
- OKAY??? BUT WHERE? WHAT IS THIS PLACE???
- no
- no
- NO
- NO
- NO
- THIS IS SOME EDGAR ALLAN POE BULLSHIT
- THIS IS STRAIGHT OUT OF THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
- THIS IS ABSOLUTELY ONE OF THE MOST HORRIFYING CLIFFHANGERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE
- ROB LYNBURN SEALED JARED INSIDE OF THE VERY SPACE WHERE HE PUT EDMUND PRESCOTT ALL THOSE YEARS AGO.
- “Rob had left a boy here to die, alone in the dark, once before.”
- THIS IS SO FUCKED UP THAT I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO COPE WITH THE THOUGHT AT ALL
- At first, that is. See, as absolutely wretched as the thought of Jared suffocating to death in that tomb is, I didn’t find the very final scene to be as heart-wrenching as the end of Unspoken. Brennan switches to Kami’s point of view right as she discovers that Jared is gone. Lillian dramatically returns with a traumatized but largely un-hurt Ten, and the reunion spawns a very specific realization in Kami:
- “Everyone was linked, Kami saw, everybody holding on to somebody, and it occurred to her that even if nobody had been willing to fight Rob, nobody had offered up a victim to him either. Nobody had offered the tokens of allegiance Rob had asked for. The people of Sorry-in-the-Vale had not surrendered yet.”
- Y’all, it’s a sign of hope. But it’s more than that. Kami’s true connection is still out there, and she is going to find him. “The Lost Love” refers to Jared, yes, but it also refers to Kami’s future: She’s going to get her lost love back.
- Oh gods, it’s a reverse damsel in distress. Jared is now the damsel, and Kami has to go rescue him. I NEED THE NEXT BOOK RIGHT NOW.
- Oh, right, now I’ve caught up to all of you. DAMN IT.
While we all wait the cruel, long wait until the next Lynburn Legacy novel comes out, I wanted to thank y’all for this journey and for introducing me to Sarah Rees Brennan’s writing. This has been a thrill to experience, and I’m glad I finally got to do her work right with a complete Mark Reads treatment. Y’all are the best.
Tomorrow, we start a new book for Double Features: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman!
Please note that the original text and the videos contain uses of “idiot” and “crazy.”
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
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