I’m not really sure how I feel about Sacrifice. Was it a good book? Yes. Was it engaging? Yes. But things were missing, and I didn’t find myself enjoying Sacrifice as much as I had hoped.

First, the romance. In the previous two books, I felt it. I was swooning as much as Alera was. In Sacrifice, I didn’t feel it. Sure, Kluver told me about how amazing Narian was and how sweet, but she didn’t show me like she did in the previous books. I feel like there needs to be more than kissing to make me fall in love, and that’s really all I got from Alera and Narian’s romance. There was some swooning in this book, but it didn’t last as long as I wished it would.

I could have handled a flat romance, if the rest of the story was spectacular. Unfortunately, it felt like there was a lot of build up to something that wasn’t fully explained. I wanted to know more about that last battle. I wanted to know how things went down. I felt like 85% of the book was leading up to this epic battle, and then nothing. There was summary, but nothing of the actual action.

I guess that’s how I feel about the entire novel, though. Legend and Allegiance were fantastic build up to Sacrifice, while fell short of what I was expecting. It felt like more of a middle novel, lots of little things happened, and one or two large things happened, but it didn’t feel like its own novel. Plus, the ending wrapped up a little too fast. I would have loved having the last 10% of the novel expanded.

Sacrifice wasn’t a bad book, but it didn’t live up to the caliber the first two novels had set. It’s a fine novel, but I wanted something more and it just wasn’t there.