Review: The Road to Helltown

The Road to Helltown by S.M. Reine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

OK, I’m not sure what I expected out of the last Cesar book, but it totally wasn’t this! This author knows how to make me feel so safe in the knowledge of oodles of previous books and then just pulls the rug out from under me! I expected a bloody, gory, fight to the end and instead I got the most satisfying book of the series!

Cesar is still... Cesar. If you were annoyed with him before, his participation in the events leading up to the apocalypse will not make you love him more. His actions afterwards are just… the best. I’m getting ahead of myself, but in a world where I know what happens years after, years before, and to other people at the same time, where to draw the spoiler line gets confusing. We are still rapidly approaching what people know will be a drastic change for the world as everyone knows it. Cesar is the saddest, reluctant participant in the apple, but he’s still going along with their plans. Can you feel me shaking my head at him? That’s what I’ve done through most of the series.

As things start looking worse and worse, he is actually forced to make some tough decisions. He can no longer stay on the sidelines or be pulled along by either his girlfriend or his boss’s wife. As far as his storyline goes, he certainly gets the best of all endings available. We know where he has to end up (or at least anyone who has read the surrounding books knows) but the path is totally uncertain. There will be a re-making of sorts, so all bets are totally off. What someone ended as before that can be undone, essentially meaning no one is safe anymore. As the last book of this series, I guess I expected it to be darker. The fact that it left me smiling and happy was a pleasant surprise. It gets dark, don’t worry, but it is 100% worth it to get to the end.

Do we get all the answers we want? I think we do. We get to find everyone’s path forward while watching the pieces get in place for Dana’s series to pick up. I even wanted to hug Fritz! Who wants that before this book? Nobody! Now I’ve got soft and fuzzy feelings for everyone (you know, except the big bads). This book was surprising in the best way possible and gave probably the most satisfying end I could have hoped for in the Cesar storyline.


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