Otherworld is shaken by war and devastation. Thousands
are dead and thousands more will die before the end.
But the war against the demons and their allies is not
the only battle. Something ancient is awakening. Something from the depth of
the world’s history – and something driven for revenge
To face such a power of old, only another ancient power
will match it. But getting to him will be hard- and if they can awaken him from
their long sleep, can they even guarantee he will help them?
I was reading this book, enjoying this book and waiting
for the plot to get going. I saw the intro, was reintroduced to the characters
again. I was reminded of the many adventures the team has been through, I was
reminded of the terrible trials they’ve endured and also reminded of some of
the allies they’ve made and powers they’ve gained over this huge series
I also remembered that in the last few books things got a
lot more serious with outright devastating war tearing across the Otherworld
All laid out, with sufficient ominous foreshadowing and
visions of something big and terrifying beginning to arise – time to enter an
epic… what the hell we’re nearly half way through?
No, really, after covering all of that which was really
more of a giant recap more than anything else, with a random encounter tucked
in there as well, and half the book is gone. A huge chunk of the book has just
passed and not a great deal of things has actually happened.
It’s not awful, because the world, these characters, this
meta plot is all really fascinating and great fun to explore and roll around
in. It’s one thing I’ve always loved about this entire series. I love this
world. I love this series. I love this raising, shining metaplot. But half a
book on recap and reiteration with a random encounter tucked in is a huge, vast
amount of space to give without actually advancing anything.
That random encounter is a winter portal that opens up
for random reasons, has a random witch involves and then we have yetis and pixies
and… whyyyyy whyyy is this here? It’s not even a particularly epic fight. They
shoo off some pixies… whyyyy? Why have this in here when we’ve already got so
much padding going on?
When we finally get to the plot it’s more interesting –
it greatly expands the story of three of the more intriguing characters: the Arthurian
legend part of the storyline. They’ve always interested me, I’ve always wanted
to see how much of the Arthurian legend actually affects these characters and how
that fits the overall meta. I also really like the idea of old powers rising. I
think there’s a risk of distracting from the main conflict, but I think it
gives us an excellent opportunity to examine these ancient beings, the history
of this amazing world and expanded outwards into the hard choices that those
ancients made and how things were far less simple than the sisters originally thought.
This meta is definitely meta I want to grow – bring it on
