The man with no humanity within himself was trying to save humanity, but in doing so, he was destroying it. It was ironic in this amazingly circular kind of way.

He wasn’t, but he convinced himself that everything he was doing was necessary and worth it in order to do what he deemed right. He honestly believed that he was doing the right thing. I hated Captain Jordan just as much this time as I did in Book 2, and yet, I found myself almost feeling sorry for him (which, let me tell you, is some damn good writing because he was an awful person). Last but certainly not least, there was Captain Jordan, who was running the Hive. For that we had what I believe was a new POV character, but it allowed us to see more of the goings-on in the Hive. There was also a new team of hell divers training and going down to the surface on a mission. It was interesting seeing things from various POVs, seeing what this mission meant to each of them, seeing what was important to them. Then there was Michael and his team on the Deliverance, heading to the location of X’s last transmission in order to try and find him. He was a great character and an imperfect but good-hearted man with so much inner strength and determination, and he deserved so much better than being abandoned the way he was. With each new passage showing us a glimpse into his life on the surface, another piece of my heart cracked off. I spent the whole book with my heart breaking for X. The story alternated between two timelines and multiple POVs, and one of the timelines was about X and his time on the surface over the previous ten years. Also just a note, I’m going to talk about all the characters and events in past tense because I can never figure out what tense to use when reviewing ongoing series.* *Warning: The next four paragraphs contain SPOILERS for previous books in the series. And it was unpredictable in that I had no idea what might actually happen. All of this book was gripping and filled with intensity. Other parts of this book were so hopeful and wholesome that I actually teared up. Parts of this book were so depressing and harsh and terrible that they were downright hard to read. This book was an emotional punch to the stomach-and I mean that in the best, most complimentary way possible! *I received an ecopy of this book via NetGalley.

Deliverance by Nicholas Sansbury Smith