Status
Call number
Series
Collections
Publication
Description
Every war comes down to the flash of bright steel, even when the air is full of magic . . . Aranthur and his friends have come together across different continents and realms with one purpose: to strike back against the forces which have torn a hole in the heavens and threaten to rip the world beneath them apart as well. With time running short, and treason at home, there are battles to be fought on the field, in the magical arena, and in the ever-deadly realm of politics, and they must succeed on every front or everything will fall. Victory will require enemies to trust one another, old foes to fight together, spies to reveal the truth and steadfast allies to betray long-corrupt rulers. Is Aranthur, a twenty-year-old student, really the master strategist to bring it all together? And can he and his friends overcome aeons of lies when their plans inevitably fall to pieces? Do they even know, for sure, who the enemy is . . . ?… (more)
User reviews
The thematic and narrative arc of the entire work has been towards the avoidance, if not quite the renunciation, of violence, and particularly killing, as a means of resolving disputes. As such this third volume faces a
It does so by consistently declining direct fight-to-the-death confrontation in ways which raise the immediate risks. In other words, it's a series of gambles with high stakes: the empire and rhen the world: the latter involving direct conflicts with principalities and powers. Most of the fighting is against extremely powerful adversaries, combining arcane and more prosaic forms of engagement, with a large admixture of strategy.
Aranthur continues to move in the direction of becoming a lightbringer; some of the things he learns cast the early events of the series in a different light. The degree of success they have can be traced directly to his willingness to do well, to trust and communicate with entities whom others reject, and, finally, to release the bonds of those unjustly bound.
The novel evades the standard pattern of defeating a great evil in an apocalyptic showdown, or even a Tolkienian end of an age; it's clear that in many ways the result of all the conflict plus a world which still incorporates good and evil, if only at a reduced level of risk - for the present - even if the immediate prospects are upward rather than downward.
This is an effective end to a good trilogy.