Transcendent by Lesley Livingston student book review by Nicole

Resuming immediately after the cliffhanger of the second novel of this trilogy, Transcendent is action-packed from the start. Haunted by the prophecy surrounding Ragnarok, both intentional and unintentional choices make the destruction of everything more of a reality. Despite the grim future, the daring protagonist Mason Starling is determined to prevent her world from going to its end. She pushes through adversity alongside her transformed romantic interest, the Fennrys Wolf, in order to thwart what the fates and her father has deemed inevitable. Throughout this book there is constant danger and the plot’s twists and turns are plentiful. All in all, the plot rose to a wonderfully crafted climax for the final novel in this series which lead to an unexpected but well-thought out resolution. 

In general, I agree with the majority of the reviews throughout other sources such as GoodReads. The action picked up right at the beginning and never stopped. There is a huge connection to Norse mythology and that truly added to the amount of action that Livingston wrote. Saying that, I believe that my interest in mythology helped my reading of this book. I would recommend this series to a lover of Rick Riordan’s novels or other YA fantasy/mystery books. The mythology used was good but I believe that the integration of multiple mythologies such as Greek could have been done better. I believe it could have been improved if a singular mythology was used in order to be true to that culture. With the heavy reliance upon mythology, the characters follow in suit violence-wise. In addition, there is mild language but nothing that the general YA population hasn’t read in other novels. 

Other than that it is a generally clean novel. Within the classroom or the library this novel would fit right alongside the Percy Jackson or Mortal Instruments series. A mythology themed month containing these novels would be a great addition to the bookshelf. One last important thing to note, it is vital to read this novel as the last book of the trilogy. Without the prior knowledge of the rest of the books, Transcendent is confusing and almost unreadable.