#emifal fiirdant

[nonsensical-nothings]

helene and avitas deserved better

so i just finished reading A Sky Beyond the Storm and as i’m sure any fellow readers would understand, i’m absolutely heartbroken over the ending. i’m feeling a lot of emotions right now, so this might be a jumbled mess, but i just wanted to write out my thoughts. 

okay i understand that the deaths were probably meant to highlight the tragedy of war and the indiscriminate nature of death, showing that anyone could die at any time and just how high the stakes were, but i can’t help but be upset. maybe it was realistic, but in terms of the story, i felt like it was unnecessarily tragic. 

i’ve been rooting for Helene and her happiness since book 1. the girl has had it rough -- she sacrificed herself to serve under a man she hated in order to help her best friend run away, was ordered to hunt and kill said best friend or else suffer the consequences, and then watched her mom, dad, and sister get killed right in front of her because she failed to do so, with her remaining sister being forced into a marriage with the loathsome emperor. 

naturally, she blames herself for her family’s deaths and her sister’s suffering. tragedy follows her at every turn, and the poor girl just cannot catch a fucking break. she forces herself to shut away her emotions and dedicate herself entirely to the Empire. she becomes scared to love, because it seems like anyone she loves is inevitably taken away from her. this is why she desperately tries to keep her distance from Avitas, not wanting to open herself up to more heartbreak and pain that she’s not sure she can handle. 

and yet, she finds that her heart betrays her, and slowly but surely, she falls in love with him, even though it takes her a while longer to fully come to terms with it. at the end of reaper, she pushes Avitas away after their kiss, putting up a wall between them with her position as Blood Shrike. however, in SKY, she is finally able to face her feelings, which is so important to her character growth and path to healing. she took the initiative to seek out Avitas and admit her feelings to him, opening herself up to love and be loved, and also allowing herself to become vulnerable to the pain and devastation that would come with losing him. 

Helene was afraid of loving because she felt that she would only lose them, but allowing herself to love Avitas was so important in helping to heal that trauma. it just feels like his death would only reinforce the idea that loving people only ends in pain to helene, which isn’t what she needed after all of the suffering she’s already experienced. i know helene seemed to be recovering after avitas’s death, but realistically, i feel like his death would’ve finally pushed her over the edge. you’re telling me that after losing her entire family except livia, then watching livia bleed out in front of her, seeing faris sacrifice his life for her, and finally, watching the love of her life die because he was trying to help her wouldn’t have completely broken her??? i thought that after livia, avitas would at least stay by her side. i thought that she’d be granted this one happiness after all of her suffering but APPARENTLY NOT. i’m upset that avitas’s death wasn’t even important to the plot, but it ruined the positive trajectory that helene was headed on.

i was also annoyed because laia and elias were able to get their happily ever after while helene just got more trauma and suffering. i’m happy for laia and elias, but i don’t like the fact that all their problems were conveniently solved with the reappearance of cook/mirra, who was thought to be dead until the very end of this book, which made it feel like she was just brought back so that she could relieve elias of his duties as the soul catcher. it just seems like he got off the hook a little too easily, considering the weight of his vow to mauth. comparing her convenient "resurrection” to avitas’s death, it just makes his death feel so cheap and unnecessary. 

i guess what i’m trying to say is that if avitas had to die in order to illustrate the realistic and tragic costs of war, the same gravity should have been applied to elias’s situation and he realistically should have dealt with heavier, lasting consequences from his vow to be the soul catcher. right now, it feels like elias got a happy ending because he’s a main character while avitas, as a side character, got screwed over. i just wish they both could’ve gotten their happy endings.