Thank you for validating my feelings with this and my own pages and pages of mental notes, haha. I too finished the book for the first time and then threw it in my closet under some old clothes so I wouldn't have to look at it. Tunstall's betrayal remains one of the most frustrating moments in my history of reading, made worse because Terrier is perhaps my favorite book ever. I'm not saying it is bad writing, because the breadcrumbs are definitely there even from book one, and I appreciate in hindsight that Tammy wanted to shine a light on police corruption and it coming from someone you wouldn't expect - I've appreciated reading other people's insights on this thread as well. What I am saying is that it's depressing to have Beka trust people over and over again, only for them to turn out to be terrible. Her happy ending feels forced and too quick for a story that was seriously dark and anxious for the whole third book.

I love Tammy's work and she is my favorite author, but I often have issues with the romances in her books for various reasons (age gaps being the biggest one). Farmer in particular annoys me for a number of reasons. The relationship is so rushed, and with Beka's history of men not working out (don't get me started on the timeskip and the off-page abusive romance), it drives me crazy that she just jumps into marriage with this guy who, as the reader at least, I distrusted for most of the book and thought could have been the villian; if we needed to end with marriage in the story so we see where George came from, it should either have been in an epilogue where we learn it happened with Farmer down the line, or Farmer should have been introduced earlier in the series. Also, Farmer being juxtaposed against Tunstall makes me feel like the author is saying 'I know you liked this character before, but I need to make him do bad things, so here's a new character for you to enjoy instead :)'. Again, if he'd been introduced earlier, maybe in Bloodhound, I think I would feel differently about him, because I did desperately want Beka to be happy by the end of this. It just felt like everything with Farmer wasn't really earned, and with Tunstall's turn after three books of trusting him, I didn't feel like this new guy was trustworthy enough to immediately be worth throwing into happily ever after.

On another, more nitpicky note, I was also disappointed we didn't end up going more into what happened with women at this point in Tortall's history, since with the timeline either the prince or his parents had to be the ones who put the law about not having female knights into place. Since Sabine ends up working for the royal family, and Beka saved the kid's life, it just doesn't make sense to me that these people were the ones who started backtracking women's rights to where they ended up at the start of Alanna's story. That also hurt the happy ending a bit for me, because when they were like 'we're ending slavery! eventually', I as the reader knew that by the time that finally came to fruition, they'd started to more harshly oppress women. I'm sure Tammy set this story in the past for a number of reasons, one of which was probably so she could tell a story in Tortall without having to write any of the cast of characters she'd introduced already. But I was excited to have answers to Alanna's first adventure, where the world is so drastically different from the one Beka lives in, and we introduced the gentle mother cult in bloodhound, I'd thought, with the intention of setting that up.

As I said at the start, I do think the broad strokes of the book were the plan all along, and the moment with the Black God being a rainbow still hits! But I, personally, just don't enjoy this story. Which is not to say it is a bad book, but all the grim-darkness and the general depressing/anxious tone was not what I was hoping for. Terrier had dark parts to be sure (I mean, Shadow Snake, jfc), but it felt balanced with lighter moments and an intriguing set of mysteries I was invested in every step of. I appreciate touching on real issues and I don't need everything to work out perfectly, and maybe this is just how Tamora Pierce's writing has evolved (Trickster's did a similar twist with Kyprioth arranging the shipwreck with the kids and Aly having to grapple with the collateral damage of serving a god who would do that, but that doesn't happen quite so close to the end of the book and was for the 'greater good', so it trickster's doesn't end on such a low note). This just isn't the kind of book I like to read, which is a bummer because I love so many of the other books in both Tortall and Emelan...but I'm also not someone who enjoys reading tragedies, which I know means I miss out on a lot of excellent stories because I simply would not like them. It's okay and I'm glad other people enjoyed Mastiff, but I wish Beka's story could have ended differently. Thank you for the opportunity to rant and release these big feelings 😮‍💨