Nix finally found his footing with the third book in the Seventh Tower series. Most of this book takes place in the spirit realm Aenir, which is where Nix lets his creativity go wild. Nix’s forte is making worlds that the reader wants to live in and Aenir is no exception. In Aenir, almost everything is alive, including water and mountains.
Milla and Tal had the misfortune of tumbling into Aenir on a cursed hill. The Storm Shepards that are bound to the hill are forced to kill one of them, unless Tal makes a life changing decision for Milla, who has been concussed. Tal agrees to sale his and Milla’s shadows to the two Storm Shepards, so the spirits will be bound to them and they can finally leave the hill. For Milla, this basically means she will be tossed out of Icecarl society as they believe any spirit from Aenir is evil. But she’s unconscious, so who cares about consent?
The two Storm Shepards, Adras (bound to Tal) and Odris (bound to Milla) are a welcome edition to the team. (Really, anyone is going to be an improvement over Tal.) The two fight like an old married couple and are sweetly ignorant to most things involving humans. (Odris is especially shocked to learn that humans can’t breathe under water.) Also making an appearance is a race of intelligent lizards that act as historians of Aenir. They help Tal and Milla retrieve the Codex from underneath the sleeping mountain.
Tal and Milla make it back from Aenir with the Codex and their new shadows. There’s another chase through the underbelly of the Castle (it seems that the servants area of the castle as created just for people to be chased through) and then an ending on a cliffhanger. As much as I have complained about the first two books, the pacing really keeps your on your toes and makes you want to finish the series in one sitting (which I did).
