A Million Worlds With You

After years of longing for this novel and weeks of wanting to read it but not having time I've finally finished Claudia Gray's Firebird trilogy. I've looked forward to A Million World With You for such a long time. I had high hopes, of course, but I thought it could rise to the bar I’d set for it but to my surprise, I was wrong. I expected this series to go out with a bang but it was barely even a pop.

Marguerite Caine has travelled around the multiverse with her parent’s invention, the Firebird, alongside her boyfriend Paul and her friend Theo. She’s seen amazing new places and horrifying worlds, meet new versions of the people she loves and been confronted again and again by people who wants her dead. Now she knows the true intention of the dimension called the Home Office and Marguerite has decided to never yield to what they want – for her to destroy a thousand universes. But Marguerite’s Home Office version, Wicked, is determined to mess with Marguerite and her family until Marguerite agrees. The fate of the multiverse hangs on Marguerite but she must battle the worst enemy to win. Herself.

Like I said, I had such high hopes for this novel and I really believed it would end in a firework of awesomeness. I expected new dimensions and plot twist upon plot twist, a Marguerite who would’ve matured over the past two novels and now sees the world and the multiverse in a new light. I can’t really say that’s what I got. Instead, Gray let Marguerite chase after Wicked in dimension after dimension so that Marguerite could clear up the mess that Wicked left behind. This was just enough time to see parts of the dimensions but not enough to really get to explore. Thrice Marguerite ended up in dimensions she’s already been, which was a little disappointing. I thought for a while that this chase would last the entire novel but luckily this wasn’t the case.

The last half of the novel was, however, not much better. I kept getting annoyed over the fact that everything just happened. Things just fell into place. It’s a story, I know, but you’re not supposed to feel the author behind every word, yet I did. It was so easy to see how Gray wanted everything to go down and whenever Marguerite was in trouble, help arrived at the exact right moment to save her. The end, which I thought would be a huge explosion, turned out to be firecrackers instead. It all happened to fast and it was so small and sporadic that I kept thinking “I can’t believe this is how it ends, after everything that has happened, this is how it ends.” It was a very… underwhelming end although I like that the epilogue answered most of the questions I had.

Marguerite is more mature in this novel, it’s true, but she’s still rather stupid. Or not stupid but dumb and slow. I had figured out everything half a book before she did and when she finally came to a conclusion she rushed off without thinking twice and someone else had to pay dearly for that decision. So many things she did was annoying and I’m struggling to decide if I like her or not. She does have some qualities that make her an interesting character but it bothered me that she wasn’t a bit brighter. That would’ve save a lot of time and a lot of lives.

Marguerite is still dating Paul, but after his splintering in the second novel their relationship isn’t the same. Paul must face some very dark sides of himself in this book but unfortunately, we, as the readers, mostly get to meet Pauls from different dimensions. Theo is a heavy fixture in this book as well and he might very well be my favourite character. He changes a lot yet remains the same sweet, flirty Theo from the beginning of the first novel.

Something that greatly bothered me in this book is that the huge plot twist about what the Home Office is doing involved Marguerite’s sister Josie yet Josie from Marguerite’s dimension is barely even in this book at all. She appears briefly in the end but I think she should’ve featured more throughout the story, since everything revolved around her. They all talked about her but she never really said anything herself. Another thing that annoyed me was the all of the plot twists that popped up during the story and, mostly, how they turned out. I could think of five different ways for this novel to go and Gray seemed to choose the easiest and most boring ones at every turn. I really think more could’ve been done with this novel and I’m both sorry and I feel cheated that this is what I got. It’s not the last part of the trilogy that I wanted. With that said, I still think it’s a good series worth considering and it does have quite a few moral lessons and interesting viewpoints so if the multiverse interests you then I still recommend the Firebird trilogy. Just don’t hope for too much from the last novel.