Firestorm

Firestorm is the third installment in the Worldmaker Trilogy by Lucy Hounsom.  Published December 14th, 2017 by Pan Macmillan it's over 500 pages of epic fantasy which satisfyingly ties up much of the story arc from the first two books.  The author has style and despite the length, the story doesn't drag at all.  I found myself looking forward to stealing reading time to spend in this world with these characters.  The prose really resonated with me and I never found myself rolling my eyes internally over inane characters or dialogue.  The characters are real and their motivations are consistent.

The world building is simply spectacular and the magic system includes timeline/world shifting... and dragons.  Honestly, she had me at dragons. Intelligent dragons.  This book ticked a whole lot of boxes for me which can lead to inflated expectations and disappointment.  Happily for once, the payoff was well worth the journey.  This was a very satisfying read and one that I just might go back and revisit from the first book through again.

The prose is beautifully fluid and deftly crafted.  For people who read epic fantasy regularly, there's nothing extremely rough or objectionable in the text.  I imagine few people go into a three volume campaign fantasy expecting a cat-based cozy romance/mystery...  That being said, there -is- murder, betrayal, rape, suicide, and the occasional narrative 'damn' 'hell' or 'bitch'.

This is a brick of a book.  There is no hand-holding or spoon feeding of info.  It's not particularly good as a standalone, but it is spectacularly well written and I'm looking forward to the author's future work.

Four stars for Firestorm and four and a half for the series.  I hope Ms. Hounsom writes more books in this world/milieu.  There are some tantalizing backstories left unwritten.

Available in ebook and paperback format.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.