The Immortal series is a strange one, and Destiny is no exception. These books are evocative and deeply haunting, like there's some greater mystery to them beyond just the story being told by the words on their pages. Every time I finish one, I'm left with more questions than answers, never entirely sure of what I've just read. But I suppose that's Gillian Shields's intent, to create this aura of mysticism and mystery about her books that makes them strangely captivating and memorable. And it totally works.

Shields's writing sets off these books from almost anything else I've read. She deals in secrets, so even now that I've finished the fourth book, I still don't really understand the Mystic Way, the path of magic followed by boarding school friends Evie, Sarah, and Helen, any more than I did before I started the first book. And while Helen's mother, former Headmistress Celia Hartle, and her coven of witches are the obvious flesh and blood villains of the series, a mysterious archdemon-like figure, the Eternal King of the Unconquered Lords, threatens from beyond. Reality and magic blend together, aided by Shields's darkly poetic style, and though her writing does occasionally wander into the overly dramatic or sentimental at times, for the most part the story flows quite well. Each book adds an extra piece to the puzzle, wrapping up a pretty much self-contained plot, yet at the same time expands the size of the puzzle six or seven fold, adding plenty of new loose ends to be tied up.

Some stuff I would normally be bothered by, the intentional vagueness, the oversentimentality, the overreliance on faith, I think suits this book quite well. Helen's story may even be the best in the series, certainly better than Eternal. Coming into this book, Helen's not as well developed as Evie or Sarah, but she's already established as this tragic character, a victim of her mother. So she's torn between her mother and the past and her friends and the present, trying to balance her loyalty to Evie and Sarah with her hope that her mother can be redeemed, maybe looking for a little redemption for herself too. And her diary entries really add to her characterization as a tortured soul, down to her confessions to the mysterious Wanderer character, though it was pretty easy for me to guess who he is. But the way her character progresses, coming to terms with her childhood, her relationship with her mother, and opening her heart to her friends, it's all the makings of a really great, complex, and interesting character.

Although this is Helen's book, Evie and Sarah are back - the chapters alternate points of view among the three girls. I don't think Evie's as great as she was in the first two books - she sort of lost her spark when she lost Sebastian in the second book. And Sarah I still feel is the weakest link. I didn’t mind though, I like the focus on Helen’s character. And for a series I felt Betrayal did a good job of wrapping up, I'm surprised Destiny still manages to expand on the previous books and satisfyingly wrap up the storylines again, while still leaving an opening for a fifth book. Or maybe it's just because I have so many questions, about the Mystic Way, about the Eternal King, about the Guardians and Time itself, and Shields is just doing an awesome job of getting me to keep thinking about her premise, going through the plot without giving everything away.

Destiny, heck the entire Immortal series besides Eternal, is a series I really like reading because everything feels strangely unfamiliar even though the plot itself is not hard to follow. Shields writes these books in such a way that resolves everything that needs to be resolved yet leaves behind so many mysteries I can't help but keep reading.