The final (until the next one is written) book in the Landover series! I couldn’t believe how disinterested I was in Ben and Willow’s storyline. I wanted to spend much more time with Nightshade and Mistaya or Abernathy, Quester, and Elizabeth. Maybe that’s because I feel like Willow and Ben have gone about as far as they can go as characters. They do reveal some very personal secrets to each other in this book, but they’re always accepting of each others’ (mostly Ben’s) faults. Mistaya, on the other hand, gets to hear Nightshade’s history, though somewhat edited, and they develop a strange friendship that you know can only be doomed in the end. I think that Terry Brooks has some real potential with his villains, but we spend so much time with the heroes of the story, who are fairly bland in comparison, that we hardly ever get the villains’ perspective. More Nightshade!

Maybe it’s just the move to Washington, but it was very cool to see Abernathy and Quester set in a local environment for me as a reader. I was hoping Elizabeth would reappear in the series, but the potential relationship between herself and Abernathy gets dumped by the wayside for Ben and Willow’s story. grumble

Okay, I’m complaining a lot. I did like this book, but I never felt pressed to keep reading, so I started and stopped several times along the way. The side characters her are much improved and, while it’s not my favorite Landover book, I thought it was a good one.

The final (until the next one is written) book in the Landover series! I couldn’t believe how disinterested I was in Ben and Willow’s storyline. I wanted to spend much more time with Nightshade and Mistaya or Abernathy, Quester, and Elizabeth. Maybe that’s because I feel like Willow and Ben have gone about as far as they can go as characters. They do reveal some very personal secrets to each other in this book, but they’re always accepting of each others’ (mostly Ben’s) faults. Mistaya, on the other hand, gets to hear Nightshade’s history, though somewhat edited, and they develop a strange friendship that you know can only be doomed in the end. I think that Terry Brooks has some real potential with his villains, but we spend so much time with the heroes of the story, who are fairly bland in comparison, that we hardly ever get the villains’ perspective. More Nightshade!

Maybe it’s just the move to Washington, but it was very cool to see Abernathy and Quester set in a local environment for me as a reader. I was hoping Elizabeth would reappear in the series, but the potential relationship between herself and Abernathy gets dumped by the wayside for Ben and Willow’s story. grumble

Okay, I’m complaining a lot. I did like this book, but I never felt pressed to keep reading, so I started and stopped several times along the way. The side characters her are much improved and, while it’s not my favorite Landover book, I thought it was a good one.

The book was fantastic, to say the least, a very lighthearted fantasy in keeping with the earlier books. See my full review at Bastique!