The Forever Ship is the concluding part to the Fire Sermon trilogy and therefore this review may contain spoilers for the previous books.

She was a rumour made flesh. A person from Elsewhere. A person without a twin.
There’s always a certain satisfaction from completing a trilogy or series. Although this wasn’t my favourite instalment I couldn’t imagine not reading it, I just wanted to know what happens in the end.
If you need a quick recap, Cass and Zach are twins in a world where everyone is twinned. Each birth brings a “perfect” Alpha and an Omega with deformities or other disabilities. When one twin dies, so does the other, that is the strength of their bond. Cass was separated from her brother later than normal as she could hide her ability, that she saw visions, including those of the blast which brought about the twinning.
In The Map of Bones, proof of Elsewhere was discovered in the form of Paloma, an untwinned young woman sent as an emissary. With the use of medicines from the before, they have ended twinning even though birth defects are still the norm. Cass, Piper and Zoe have teamed up with The Ringmaster, an ex-Council member to fight The General and Zach, who are tanking Omegas and have plans to bomb Elsewhere with the blast technology.
You chose this. I won’t be made to feel guilty any more. I’m your twin. I grew up with you, and I’ll die with you. But in between, I won’t carry your crimes.
For all the evil Zach has done, I was still waiting with baited breath for his change of heart, yet his resentment for Cass is still strong. His selfishness does bring him to seek asylum in New Hobart, knowing that they would protect him for Cass’s sake.
The resistance is at war with the Council and Francesca doesn’t shy away from showing the sheer number of resulting deaths. There were a lot of battle scenes which isn’t something I particularly enjoy reading and at times it felt it was impossible it could ever end well.
I thought the second book had done a good job of showing the fatal bond between twins and I would have liked that carried on a bit more during the battles. Because they were killing a lot of twins in the process but that was glossed over, except for a few times when Cass saw a vision of the twin’s death. It’s such a complex and conflicting thing, two lives so intertwined with each other. At times you can kind of see where Zach was coming from even though it doesn’t forgive his acts.
There are still things worth fighting for. There’s more to the world than fire and ash.
It seemed a bit inconsistent that twins were feeling more shared pain; if they were so affected by the others’ health would those with a tanked twin not be suffering? At one point Cass tortures herself to get information out of Zach because he feels the same pain. It didn’t quite all fit together for me this time.
I had hoped this final instalment would have been set in Elsewhere, instead it is just mentioned, a lot. There was also some repetition around the seers’ visions of the blast and how it was inevitable, it could have done with a tighter edit to be a much pacier book, but I do think pacing has been the one issue throughout the trilogy that made it less than perfect.
The Forever Ship is published by Harper Voyager and is out now in hardback and ebook editions. Thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy for review via NetGalley.
Goodreads | Amazon | Waterstones | Hive | Wordery
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book free of charge for review purposes only. Receipt of a book does not guarantee a review or endorsement. My reviews are my honest opinion and are not biased for the purpose of personal gain.
Related posts
Read Next
Subscribe via Email
Recent Posts
Today's #bookpost , my pre-order of A History of What Comes Next and a review copy of For the Wolf from @orbitbooks https://t.co/CW9NjJZTbT
Follow[gifted] Surprise #bookpost from @orbitbooks_uk - thanks @gambit589! 🐺🐺🐺 #bookpost #bookpost #bookpost … https://t.co/eUUi813dxG
FollowCurrently Reading
Black Sun
Today he would become a god. His mother had told him so. The opening line may seem like something any mother would tell her son, but in the case of Serapio, his mother truly believes he will become the Crow God reborn. She blinds him,…
Legendborn
The day Bree gets accepted into an early college placement at UNC, is the day her mother dies. The last words they spoke were of anger. Unable to deal with her dad’s grief on top of her own, Bree goes ahead with the placement. Once…
Ninth House
Alex Stern does not belong at Yale. When she awakes as the sole survivor of a multiple homicide, presumed a drug deal gone wrong, she is given an unlikely offer. Come to Yale, join the House of Lethe and oversee the rituals of the other…
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
Just let me dust off this blog thing, I have a review for you! One of my anticipated reads released during lockdown was the follow-up to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. If you read that, of course will will be dying to know what happened to…