Review--The Warrior by Victoria Scott

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.

So it’s taken me wayyy too long, but I have finally read Victoria Scott’s The Warrior, which brings us a spine-tingling conclusion to the Dante Walker trilogy! Granted, since it’s been so long, I have forgotten a chunk of details, but I was able to dive fairly easily into this one! Enough was recapped that I was totally on board with what was going down!

We pick up where we left things, which is in dire predicaments. Aspen is trapped in Hell, Hell still has Charlie’s soul, but Dante now has his returned. He, Charlie and their friends of Liberators are working together to prepare for war. War between Heaven and Hell is coming and it will be catastrophic. Charlie and a new member of the crew, an old man named Oswald who’s pretty kooky but wise beyond reason, work to decipher the scroll that basically tells us what will happen with this impending war.

This was a pretty fast read for me, the pacing was remarkable in that we hardly ever had a dull moment. With war on the horizon, tension is high. To spice things up, we learn that there is a possible traitor among our heroes and I thought I totally had it pegged down. I mean, it felt like a very wise assumption, but then when the reveal finally came I was astounded to be wrong. Not just wrong, but sooo very wrong! Never had I expected this person to be our traitor, though my guess turned out half right eventually as there’s never just one deceiver.

Besides loving Dante and his witty banter and just his overall awesomeness, and loving Charlie for always remaining true to herself, one of my favorite characters remains to be Annabelle. Here is a girl who’s fiercely loyal to her best friend, and despite not having any supernatural powers to add to the cause, she refuses to leave Charlie’s side despite Kraven constantly telling her to do so. She fights back and she fights back hard. This is not a girl you want to get on her bad side. I love her can-do attitude, because it comes with a side of butt-kicking if you tick her off enough!

And despite not being a fan of love triangles, I did find I enjoyed having Annabelle caught between two guys. As we previous knew, she and Kraven have that love/hate relationship going on, but Kraven is too hard-headed to allow a relationship between them. Then when one of their newer liberators starts to take a shine onto Anna, things get heated. I liked Paine though, but you could see where Anna’s heart truly lied, so I knew he would end up in pain as well (yeah couldn’t resist a witty Dante pun!).

The ending was one of the most action packed endings I’ve read since the last Harry Potter book! We’re at war! There’s fighting going on left and right and everything is so intense! There are small battles and there are large. This book truly has it all.

The character growth is another thing I enjoyed. Dante was a bit of an a-hole in the first book, but we saw him change even through that one. I loved watching him grow. Charlie was the best influence on him and I loved that no matter how much he tried to change her, she never really did change on the inside.

The Warrior is an action pack read that will leave gasping for breath at all the surprising shocks and turns it will take. But by the end, you know all that pain and excitement was worth it. The ending is fitting and right and I couldn’t be happier with it. And because this is Dante’s final chapter, it’s only right to end the review with this: Pow!

Overall Rating 5/5 stars