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    The Descent: Book Three of the Taker Trilogy
    The Descent: Book Three of the Taker Trilogy
    The Descent: Book Three of the Taker Trilogy
    Ebook326 pages5 hours

    The Descent: Book Three of the Taker Trilogy

    By Alma Katsu

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The author of The Hunger delivers a “daring, soaring, and ultimately gut-wrenching” (The New York Times) conclusion to her critically acclaimed Taker Trilogy, bringing Lanore McIlvrae to a final encounter with Adair, her powerful nemesis.

    Dismayed by Adair’s otherworldly powers and afraid of his passionate temper, Lanore has run from him across time, even imprisoning him behind a wall for two centuries to save Jonathan, her eternal love. But instead of punishing her for her betrayal, Adair declared his love for Lanore once more and set her free.

    Now, Lanore has tracked Adair to his mystical island home to ask for one last favor. The Queen of the Underworld is keeping Jonathan as her consort, and Lanore wants Adair to send her to the hereafter so that she may beg for his release. Will she honor her promise to return to Adair? Or is her true intention to be reunited with Jonathan at any cost?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGallery Books
    Release dateJan 7, 2014
    ISBN9781451651850
    Author

    Alma Katsu

    Alma Katsu was born in Alaska and raised near Concord, Massachusetts. She has a BA in writing from Brandeis University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Program. She is the author of The Taker Trilogy (The Taker, The Reckoning, and The Descent) as well as The Hunger and The Deep. The Hunger was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Locus magazine award and was selected as one of NPR’s 100 favorite horror stories. She lives with her husband in Virginia. Visit her on Twitter @AlmaKatsu.

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    Reviews for The Descent

    4.5/5

    11 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The first two books were 5 star. I couldn't wait for the final installment in the series. I flew threw the first 100 pages and then I put it down. It just didn't enthrall me like the first two books. This started out as a fantasy series and then turned into Greek mythology. Adair was just a shadow of his bad boy self here. It's like he turned into a marshmallow. The passion and historical fiction of the past two books was turned into ruminations on the meaning of life in this one. Although I was glad Lanny ended up with who she did I missed the complex weaving of the story that enthralled me in the earlier books. By all means read the swan song to the series but The Taker will always be my favorite.
    • 3/5
      The Descent, which is book three of The Taker series by Alma Katsu completes the tale of Lanore McIlvare, the young beautiful farm girl bestowed with the gift of immortality. In this final chapter Lanore is in mourning from burying her mortal lover Luke when she is tortured with dreams of her first love Jonathan, whom she turned into an immortal herself and then killed to release him. Jonathan is trapped in the underworld, a kind of purgatory, where he is being beaten and brutalized. Lanore knows she must save him and the only person who can help her do so is her maker, Adair. The relationship between Lanore and Adair has always been a turbulent one. From his dominance and keeping of her to her sealing him in a brick tomb for decades. But only Adair possesses the ability to send Lanore into the Underworld to help Jonathan and then have the power to bring her back. What Katsu does so well in these novels, and is so powerful here in the third book, is probe the relationship her immortal characters have not with one another, but with themselves. With their own immortality."...It seemed the immortality-rather than make me more sensitive to the pain of losing a loved one-had robbed me of the ability to feel real emotion in the face of death. When my lovers and friends died, my feelings were always muted and distant. I'm not sure why this was. It might have been to protect me from being swamped by grief, so I wouldn't relive the sadness I'd felt for each of the people I'd lost over the course of my life. Or maybe it was because I knew from experience that, soon enough, another person would come along and-if not take Luke's place, not exactly-at least distract me form missing him. Because I had no choice but to live on and on..." Lanore finds Adair on his hidden island but Adair is different. Subdued. No longer the arrogant and powerful being who had given her an eternal life but someone else. More man than monster now. The attraction between them is great and at first Adair is reluctant to help Lanore out, but after extracting her promise to return, he relents. In the Underworld Lanore finds more than she was prepared for. Past friends and companions each serving a sentence of pain and regret to the Queen of the Underworld."...Sophia, is that your baby?" I asked carefully, my stomach tightening. "Yes, a girl," she said but offered no name. "May I hold her?" She shot me a contemptuous look but, tentatively, she held the child out to me. She was still in my arms and too heavy for her size, like a sodden bundle of wash. With trepidation, I lifted the corner of blanket covering the baby's face, steeled for something horrific. There was a neatly swaddled infant inside, but whether she was alive or dead was impossible to tell. The baby didn't seem to breathe and yet here was a whisper of animation to her, a pulse behind the eyelids, a slight tremor at the corner of her mouth. Her skin was the strangest color, a pale gray-blue as though she had stopped breathing-or because she had never breathed. Poor Sophia. This had been her punishment for taking her life while her unborn child was still inside her: to carry the baby with her for eternity and never to see it wake up. She could not put her down, she couldn't bury her and be done with it. She was doomed to be forever hopeful that the baby might open her eyes and look at her, but to know in her heart that she never would..." In the Underworld she learns the secrets behind Adair and the lie that Jonathan is. She learns that the one love left in her is for the immortal she feared and hated most at one time. And the one she loved as well. Adair and Lanore, are they able to become as Hades and Persephone before them? The Descent moves smoothly, but unlike the two prior books in the Taker series, the Descent is much more of a love story and it is the love story that is realized between Adair and Lanore that is center to the novel.
    • 4/5
      In THE DESCENT the author has taken ancient mythology and given the reader a glimpse into a few of their lives. It makes them appear more human, as opposed to sitting high overhead carelessly dabbling in the fate of human lives. The first thing I remember is the vivid dream which opens this portion of the story. It draws you into a world which everyone is familiar with, even though the readers may be entirely different. The feeling of being inside the dream is felt more, as the narrator is never described and merely referred to as I.In this story, we learn the story of who Adair and Lany are, as well as how they came to be who they are. The author does this with realistic pictures of times and places long forgotton. When reading the descriptions in Italy, you can almost loose yourself and forget you're sitting on the couch in this city. Descriptions of powers possessed by the characters is hidden in plain sight, yet at times even they are unaware of their abilities. In the end, they make choices they never intended. At the same time, immortality is presented in different light. We are given a glimpse into the negative aspects of it and you can't help but wonder if mortality is here for a reason.
    • 5/5
      This is the final volume in the trilogy that started with the very exciting The Taker. These books are far out of my usual reading box and I am so very glad I decided to take a leap into a genre I tend to avoid because if I hadn't I would have missed some good reading.The Descent picks up where The Reckoning left off - I don't want to give any spoilers - so I'll just write that Lanore is once again adrift but now she is having nightmares showing her first love, Jonathan as being shackled and held by the Queen of the Underworld and even though she does not want him back in her life she feels she needs to do what she can to help him. The only way she can do that though, is with the help of Adair - the man who made her immortal, the man who loves her, the man who she fears most in the world. Can she face him with a request to help the man he despises because Lanny loves him and not Adair?Lanny finds Adair on an island with two somewhat bizarre women and two goats. He is surprised to see her and torn by her request. He wants to help her to show that he's a changed man but doesn't want to lose her. He agrees if, and only if she promises to return. She does but things don't work out quite as either one of them planned.As with the first two books the writing is powerful. It pulls you into the story from the very first; from the descriptions of Adair's island to the demons in the underworld the words flow to produce vivid images as you read. The characters are all familiar by this third installment and it's a book that showcases their maturity and growth. The overall result is a theme that showcases the power of love from its most destructive to its most protective. A fitting conclusion to excellent series.
    • 5/5
      This is the final volume in the trilogy that started with the very exciting The Taker. These books are far out of my usual reading box and I am so very glad I decided to take a leap into a genre I tend to avoid because if I hadn't I would have missed some good reading.The Descent picks up where The Reckoning left off - I don't want to give any spoilers - so I'll just write that Lanore is once again adrift but now she is having nightmares showing her first love, Jonathan as being shackled and held by the Queen of the Underworld and even though she does not want him back in her life she feels she needs to do what she can to help him. The only way she can do that though, is with the help of Adair - the man who made her immortal, the man who loves her, the man who she fears most in the world. Can she face him with a request to help the man he despises because Lanny loves him and not Adair?Lanny finds Adair on an island with two somewhat bizarre women and two goats. He is surprised to see her and torn by her request. He wants to help her to show that he's a changed man but doesn't want to lose her. He agrees if, and only if she promises to return. She does but things don't work out quite as either one of them planned.As with the first two books the writing is powerful. It pulls you into the story from the very first; from the descriptions of Adair's island to the demons in the underworld the words flow to produce vivid images as you read. The characters are all familiar by this third installment and it's a book that showcases their maturity and growth. The overall result is a theme that showcases the power of love from its most destructive to its most protective. A fitting conclusion to excellent series.
    • 5/5
      Truly great books introduce characters into your life that seem as real as the people around you, characters that you’ll never forget. Starting with “The Taker,” Alma Katsu has brought to life just such intriguing and compelling characters, ones that I’ll be thinking about for a long time to come. After reading “The Descent,” the final installment in the trilogy, I have to say that I really hate to bid adieu to these characters and the world-building that was introduced in this last book.Filled with the atmosphere and otherworldliness that permeated the first two books, “The Descent” brings to a satisfying and fitting conclusion one of the most original stories I’ve read in a long time. The premise was truly unique and the revelation near the book’s end was one I really didn’t see coming.For anyone that’s thinking of giving this series a pass, please reconsider. I virtually devoured these books, especially the last two, and would recommend them to anyone who is looking for something unique and enthralling. You don’t run across books like this every day. No matter what’s up next for Alma Katsu, you can be sure I’ll be reading it, no matter what genre it’s in. Highly recommended.

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    The Descent - Alma Katsu

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