Islington continues the fantastic closely-held plot reveals in the conclusion of the trilogy. In this one we finally learn what happened to the Venerate's ability to see: he held onto that one for a loooong time. My major concern is that he wouldn't be able to close this epic in any kind of satisfying way within a short 3 books, but he does it.
My note on the ending was "SPECTACULAR ENDING". There's few books and epics of this length where I've been as satisfied by the ending as this one. The way the time travel was designed we know what's going to happen and it feels so weighty, and significant, and satisfying.
The anti-religion rhetoric continues:
Faithful people suffer and evil people prosper all the time, Davian—you must know that is true. Besides, if our actions are driven only by reward or punishment—eternal or otherwise—then they are motivated by greed and selfishness, not faith or love. That is where so many people go wrong, even those who say they believe in El. They obey because they think it will make their lives better, rather than themselves. And that is very much the wrong reason.”
And there's actually the occasional philosophical piece of wisdom:
You should never judge the sides of an argument simply by who is doing the arguing.
So many great plot arcs built through the time travel get closed that gave me a little shiver: e.g. we finally close the storyline of the ring.
I really appreciated the note on the open plot line on Aelric and Dezia from the author. It was a very very good decision to leave that plot line open for future novels rather than put it in the critical path of closing out this story. I feel like this is the difficult decision and option that more fantasy writers need to take.
5 star series!
