Book Review: The Memory of Babel (The Mirror Visitor #3)

 

The Memory of Babel

Christelle Dabos

5/5

I was very hesitant to read this, the third book in the Mirror Visitor series. Set nearly three years after the conclusion of the second book, Ophelia has gone those nearly three years without hearing anything about her husband. She is under close surveillance and has no idea who to trust. When the opportunity presents itself for her journey to another ark, she leaps at it. 

This book, unlike the other two, has brief POV switches to that of Victoria. Victoria is the young daughter of Farouk and Bernenilde. I wasn't especially partial to these switches but I think it's a great twist and adds depth as we are so disconnected from that entire half of the previous books. There's so much going on, the politics of the separate arcs are overwhelming in their complexity. I think that the author does a great job balancing this complexity with the personal conflicts of the main characters. The entire world might be in trouble and that's not ignored, but everyone still has their own respective plot line. 

I absolutely love Ophelia and Thorn. I was a little upset that the romance was put so much on the back burner in the other two books but I think it's once again a great representation of the author's ability to match the complexities of the worlds with the intricacies of their personal lives. Also, Ophelia and Thorn are so intensely awkward and bad at communication that it's comical. Not in a way that makes you want to throw the book and walk away, but in the way that you can genuinely understand how difficult it is for them to open up and form a relationship with one another and appreciate each of their interactions even more. It's not typical in any way, it has such a beautiful uniqueness to that I know I won't be able to get over for a while. 

I would recommend this book and this series wholeheartedly. It can certainly drag at points but it's completely worth it to get to the end. I don't know how I'm going to handle waiting until the English version of the fourth book comes out because the cliffhanger was honestly the best one yet. Ophelia has definitely secured a spot as one of my favorite protagonists and I'm so excited to see what she does next.