Title: Heartless Sky (The Zodiac Academy #7)
Author: Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti
Genre: Fantasy romance, romantasy
Publisher: N/A – Independent
Publication Date: 2021
Format: Kindle Edition
Length: 716 pages

Read if you like: fated mates, elemental magic, magical creatures, political scheming, heavy amounts of spice, soap opera style fantasy

Rating: 

The Zodiac Academy is one of the wildest series I’ve ever read for a handful of reasons. It’s dramatic in an almost soap-opera style way, the characters are equal parts loveable and outrageous, it’s spicier than any book series I’ve ever read, and the world and plot are so intricate and so well developed that I find the books to be extremely immersive. That said, I can tell this series is going to destroy me by the end, and there are still two more books to go.

Heartless Sky had all the hallmark Zodiac elements I’ve come to expect and then some. Peckham and Valenti spend a lot of time with our favourite characters, rotating through more perspectives than ever before to give you even more emotional investment, and some of my favourites were able to evolve a lot. The plot also moved forward a huge amount, and some of the bigger mysteries were finally revealed.

I sobbed uncontrollably at least 6 times throughout my read-through of this book, so while there were a lot of real promising moments, Peckham and Valenti still managed to rip my heart into a thousand pieces as well. I marked this book down one star just because at times, it did feel exceptionally long. It was still an outstanding book for me, but I will need a minute before I can take the devastation likely to come in the eighth book.

The Book: Heartless Sky by Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti Synopsis

The winds of fate are shifting, and it finally seems like they’ve been twisted in our favour.

On the run and cast out from society, we’ve been forced to hide from the mad man who stole our throne. But as more secrets come to light and my sister and I work harder than ever before to reach our potential and claim our birth right, the end is finally drawing closer.

There is no turning from this path now. The curse chases on our heels as time rushes by and the blood drenched destiny of the man I love looms ever closer just like the monster who stole our throne.

We must prepare for the final battle, but three things are clear now.

The cards have already been dealt

Blood will spill for a new future to rise.

And the stars themselves can’t help us.

The fight for the throne is upon us. All hail the heartless sky.

The Review

What a beast of a book in about ten different ways.

First of all, the plot itself was so thick in this book, there were just so many different aspects that had to be covered. From the creation of a whole rebel society in a series of underground caves to the monstrous developments in the Fae world that Lionel and Lavinia were wreaking, plus the finding of various magical objects to aid in their quest to conquer the shadows and several different major battles, a lot gets accomplished in this book. So much so that somehow, I didn’t even miss The Zodiac Academy, which is kind of astounding to me because the magic school was one of my favourite parts of this series. It was nice to make some forward movement through time though, and in this book, Peckham and Valenti continue to depart from the style of the earlier novels, which only ever covered a few weeks or months at a time. We cover a full year in this novel, and it feels like it.

The characters continued to grow on me in even more ways than I expected. By now, Seth has somehow done a full character twist and become an actual puppy dog instead of the jackass bully he was throughout so much of the earlier books in the series, and I was all here for it. The tension and confusion between him and Caleb was divine and made both of them more interesting characters to me.

Meanwhile, Tory and Darius and Darcy and Orion all get brief reprieves that helped my heart heal a little from all of the torment they’d been through. That said, as is expected of this series at this point, it’s only temporary, and probably only served to break my heart more.

I kept hoping as the book went on that the characters would find some way to magically conquer all of the obstacles that Peckham and Valenti were slowly but steadily stacking in front of them, but alas, that’s not this series’ style. Instead, I was sobbing uncontrollably at multiple intervals until it finally came to a soul-crushing end that left me in utter devastation.

As I’ve said before, I like a happy ending. And I’d like to think we’ll eventually get there in this series, but at this point, I have no idea how that would happen. I don’t think I’ve ever read books that can have me laughing out loud in one chapter and having a small breakdown by the next, so I’ll give it to Peckham and Valenti, they’re very good at the gut punch. That said, I now feel like I need a short break between these books to emotionally recover from the damage that they wrought on my soul.

For the most part, if you’ve liked every other Zodiac book, there’s no reason you wouldn’t like this one. The series has been remarkably consistent throughout and if anything, I feel like it’s gotten stronger over time, particularly as the books have picked up the pace more recently and begun to cover more ground. I marked this one down one star almost exclusively because of the length, which in and of itself is not an issue, but I did feel the pacing of the story lagging at times. It took me weeks to get through this one because there were just so many storylines and so much text. 

As a whole, this is a super consistent series for me, and I’ll definitely be continuing. The final book is set to release shortly and I’m determined to finish out the released series before it gets here.