Review: So let me sum up my issues with this story
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 21, 2013
I mentioned in my reviews of the previous two volumes that spotty writing style and an inconsistent direction are major issues.  This book, the wrap up, really highlights the inconsistencies in the story that bothered me.1) If you are going to address moral issues, you have to at least approach real world scenarios.  Instead, the author repeatedly reminded the reader about the long term impact of rape on the victim to justify the actions of the main character in imprisoning and subjugating his brother.  To tip the scales in his favor, he neglects any long term impact of said imprisonment and subjugation, writing it off with some word smithing and convenient but false psychology so that at the end the brother emerges unscathed and the main character can live on guilt free.2) Although he did try to design multidimensional characters on the most part, to take full advantage of human complexity it is necessary that the bad guy also be multidimensional.  He started to go that way (with the evil autarch) with the grandsons but ended up narrowing the character so that the story became a fable rather than a novel and the character was purely evil, so that eliminating him was a no brainer.3) You would think someone who had been raped would not enjoy having sex with someone who was begging them to stop.  I was very surprised that the author never addressed that.  Of all the ethical questions, that one would have been most interesting to me.4) The battle scenes are very simplistic.  It seems like the entire final battle, with 30,000 or something soldiers, takes place over a couple of days.  The enemy manages to hide thousands of men behind a hill.  The prince has put a person of questionable loyalty in charge of the troops and he decides to sit it out.  Doesn't sound like the work of a military mastermind.  Of course he wins anyway through a fancy military maneuver.So anyway, I figured I would finish out the arc, and I have.  Parts of it, like the others, were good.  The emphasis on crime and punishment was overdone.  It was entertaining, but I skimmed a lot of it.  For people like me who read a lot and are always looking for something new it might be worth a look, but I wouldn't recommend it to people looking for complex fantasy.