Peter M. Last

RANTS AND RAMBLES (SPOILER WARNING)

• • The only reason this book gets such a high score in the setting category is because of the work the previous books in the series have done to build an interesting and expansive world. Despite all of its many, many, many flaws, this book manages to not ruin all that effort, and the setting and world remain largely intact.
  • Inconsistency, particularly among characters, is one of my pet peeves as it can take a person right out of a story when they realize things don’t add up. This was a common occurrence for me while reading this novel. One of many examples involves a character who is written to be quite a social character; however, in one scene they are suddenly portrayed as being very stiff so the sole purpose of serving as a juxtaposition to a another, slightly less stiff character. I get that there are many reasons something like this might happen and the topic of character arcs, growth, and development deserves its own treatment. Suffice it to say that no matter the reason this glaring error snuck through to the final draft, it is a huge problem, and not the only one of its kind in this book.
  • The editing in this book seems to have gone down the toilet compared to that of the previous three books in this series. Mechanical and grammatical errors can be an annoyance, but particularly galling is the repetitious thought and sloppy writing pervasive in this novel. Take for example, a very real excerpt from the book: “…she spotted a dark shadow that could be a cave. She called to the dragons, who joined her and exclaimed over the find. It was a cave.” This groan-inducing sentence and those like it are a far cry from the tight writing of the previous three installments.
  • Obstacles in the book are often followed by solutions a sentence or two later; consequently, the solutions feel unearned and extremely anticlimactic. What is the purpose of a conflict in a story if it is barely around long enough for the reader to notice? Solutions feel particularly unearned when new magic effects are regularly invented for each fight the protagonists find themselves in. These encounters which should feel dangerous and deadly to cultivate concern and suspense are instead predictable and very safe, so the protagonists never feel like they are in any real danger. Looping back in to my rant about consistency, the powers exist only to solve a single problem and are rarely used again, even when it would be very beneficial.
  • One character randomly gets sick for no apparent reason. He just gets sick and then gets better with no consequences. What is the purpose? Is it set up for a later book? Who knows, but it doesn’t matter. The sickness should have carried consequences with it in this volume, for example, the character could have had to stay and rest, separating him from the rest of his party. Or it could have slowed the party down as a whole, creating a time crunch for the final battle. Or a million other possibilities, but it just doesn’t seem to matter at all. Very sloppy.
  • The villains are boring with the lamest of motivations. Again, I truly forgot exactly what they were trying to accomplish, but I imagine it had to do with either conquering or destroying the kingdom. Both main villains also die in super anti-climactic fashion. Remember the character whose head is accidentally bitten off by a dragon? That was one of them. Pretender, the devil character in the series, shows up as a third, bonus villain, and while his fight is a bit better than the other two, it finishes in a very unsatisfying manner.