After finishing a series that I've been following for a few years, I always find myself in that state of slight numbness. Sometimes I'm ecstatic for how a series ends and sometimes I'm disappointed. With War Storm I find myself, satisfied, not overly happy for the characters and their circumstances, but the story ended with a note of hopefulness for the future. Even though the ending wasn't something that came with a concrete, set-in-stone this is how all the problems are solved solution, I feel enough information was given that I can imagine where things would play out from there. And I like not having everything be completely wrapped up in the long-term and only having the immanent threat (being Maven and the Lakelands) be resolved. One thing I wished did happen was having someone important on the protagonists' side die, even on the antagonists' side too. Really only one important person died

being Maven (which I understand why it happened and I don't mind how it was handled, I just really freaking liked his character. He was pretty entertaining like all the time.)

It just would have been more realistic for the battles, and not having anyone that the reader actively follows die at the end takes away from the severity of it all. Also this book was a lot of planning (almost all planning going back forth with the characters), but I didn't mind that though I can understand if some people do.

I want to make an edit for this review a few days after writing it. There is one story line in this series that never really gets any resolution that I am actually disappointed in.

One of the big parts of the series was the question of why the silvers and newbloods had evolved in the first place to have powers, and from book one it was brought up that Julian was looking for the answer. It made it seem like this plot point was important to the overall story, even though as time went on it seemed clear that the story wasn't evolving in a way that focused on this question, all the books (including War Storm) have lines that reiterate the question. So never getting any semblance of an answer or even a reasoning was the most disappointing part of this finale for me.

Overall I was kind of worried going into this book from the mixed opinions I had seen from small glimpses of reviews, but by the end I don't hate it and I don't feel shorthanded except for maybe a few places. I also appreciate the growth that the characters went through, especially Mare's. At the beginning her chapters were my least favorite to read because she was all anger and petty towards Cal and she wasn't trying to understand where he was coming from, so it made her seem hypocritical. However, at the end her perspective grew and changed and I really liked the thought in that arc.
I'm gonna end it here. I'm not sure how helpful this was, but my thoughts are out and I can officially move on to the next series :D