The Warrior by Victoria Scott #BlogTour #BookReview #Giveaway

Title: THE WARRIOR
Author: Victoria Scott
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Pages: 352
Pub. Date: May 6, 2014

War between heaven and hell is coming, but Dante Walker makes it look damn good.

Dante’s girlfriend, Charlie, is fated to save the world. And Aspen, the girl who feels like a sister, is an ordained soldier. In order to help both fulfill their destiny and win the war, Dante must complete liberator training at the Hive, rescue Aspen from hell, and uncover a message hidden on an ancient scroll.

Dante is built for battle, but even he can’t handle the nightmares where spiders crawl from Aspen’s eyes, or the look on Charlie’s face that foretells of devastation. To make matters worse, the enemy seizes every opportunity to break inside the Hive and cripple the liberators. But the day of reckoning is fast approaching, and to stand victorious, Dante will have to embrace something inside himself he never has before—faith.

The Warrior is the third novel in the Dante Walker series by Victoria Scott. So beware of spoilers for the first two books.

As we know the books have been leading up to an ultimate war. How could things not end that way with the how they have been escalating. We spend about 60% of this book preparing for it. Although there are scrimiches and fact finding missions intertwined. Plus a traitor in the mix but you have to figure on that. There are characters we have known from the beginning and characters that are new to group. To be honest even though I had my guesses it’s kind of like the who done it crime where everyone could have a possible motive. No matter how well you think you know them.

With that being said I have to tell you how unpredictable the ending is. I’m not talking about who prevails and who doesn’t, it’s the little things. The things that are written in the scroll that can sometimes seem obvious and sometimes not. Some of my guesses were wrong, some were right. It had that element of surprise in many ways and I think that Victoria did an absolutely fantastic job with it. Not only that, I was so happy that all this anticipation of a battle lead up to a real battle. Not just one big epic push that you feel unsatisfied with but things that happen to bring it all together. I was super happy with the ending. I thought it played out so well and made perfect sense. It was a great climax to this story. There is some definitely sad things but they had to happen in order to bring us to the happy things.

Dante is as always interesting. The thing that I have loved about him in this series, which has endeared me to him even when he is full of himself is that even though he has developed and learned. His basic character is still the same. The changes that happen to him, that he makes for his life are not far fetched or out of character. He stays true to himself, his basic self. When we finally meet the end game Dante it’s still Dante. Just the pimped out version.

I’ve never been strongly attached to Charlie. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s because it’s not in her point of view. The thing that has been interesting to me in all 3 books is how Dante mentions things he misses about her original self, before the contract. Like he’s not fully happy with the changes she’s made. Which I think is something important to take note of. Dante thinks any version of Charlie is beautiful. She is a strong tough girl and even though her distance from Dante because of what happened with Aspen makes me sad. She really fits into her role perfectly. I might not be overly attached to Charlie but I like how she influences Dante. How her importance to him helps shapes him.

Of course there are so many other great characters. If Dante and Charlie were at an awards show their list of...I would like to thank… would be pretty long. I don’t want to delve too much into them because I don’t want to give anything away about their stories. I can tell you that the characters that you thought were kick ass, quirky and annoying are still as enjoyable as they were before.

One thing I was thinking about with this book is that it’s a battle between Heaven and Hell, and how as I writer I imagine it’s hard to address. You don’t want to focus on one religion so that’ it’s relatable so you have to strip it down to the basics. Heaven, Hell, Angels, Demons and redemption. I really liked how it was done with this series. It’s unique with it’s soul sealing and collecting and it’s one of my favorite things about the plot.

I really enjoyed this conclusion to the Dante Walker series and I will definitely miss him. I’m not sure how my life will go without him telling me how awesome he is.

Victoria Scott is a teen fiction writer represented by Sara Crowe of the Harvey-Klinger Literary Agency. She’s the author of the FIRE & FLOOD series published by Scholastic, and the DANTE WALKER trilogy published by Entangled Teen. Her books have been bought and translated in eleven foreign markets including the UK, Turkey, China, Poland, Israel, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Taiwan, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.

Victoria lives in Dallas with her husband and hearts cotton candy something fierce.