This is immersive campaign fantasy in a classic style. It provides political action, campaigning, skulduggery, questing, magic and everything for the 'doorstop fantasy' nerd. I have followed the progress of the series and world building since the beginning, and will say right away that I believe that this final book would suffer greatly by attempting to read it as a standalone. There's way too much backstory and context necessary to be read by itself.
Mr. Wexler does a superb job of maintaining detail oriented plot progression (i.e., character focused) and balancing it against the panoply of a huge world-sized political commentary. In my opinion the focus remains balanced and the characters have a vital role in plot progression without being overshadowed by or lost inside the wider world-campaign. The pace of this last book might be slightly more rushed than the previous books in the series. Going over my review notes, there were a couple of times I felt that the author wanted closure and was pushing a bit to get there. Then again, after over 2500 (!!) pages, who could possibly blame him?
One thing I admire about this series very much is the strength of the female characters. They are emphatically not there to swoon and cling helplessly to the legs of their captors/saviors. They're real, flawed, strong, and (mostly) intelligent.
I enjoyed the series very much and thought this last volume did a good job of wrapping up the disparate plot threads. It wasn't too perfect or happy-happy. It was mostly complete.
The language is about average for a doorstop fantasy. There are a fair number of curse words used and some sexual content. I don't imagine it would offend the majority of readers.
I'll miss looking forward to each new book as it's published.
Four stars, and four strong stars for the completed series.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
No comments:
Post a Comment