Review: Disappointed
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 2, 2012
I really enjoyed the first two books in this series. The characters were fun and interesting, the personal relationships were believable, and their adventures were entertaining. Zollin's discovery of his magic, Brianna's discovery of herself, Quinn's discovery of his son and Mansel's discovery that he should really be a warrior were all fun to go through with them. Everyone and everything fit together and was cohesive. The evil wizards were evil; the good guys were good guys. I liked it.Imagine my dismay when I realized part way through book three that this was not a trilogy. It could have been. It would have worked well as a trilogy. There was plenty of space in the first three books to create the story and still do it in three. This book was, as others put it, a bridge to book four.The additional characters lacked depth and development. The king, the prince, the ship captain, etc., could have been fleshed out even as background characters they were weak.I also had a lot of trouble with the typos in this book. Pretty sure the dragon was in his lair not his liar and nobody had a boot heal. And, yes, we are aware that Mansil drinks and that Zollin's mother died in childbirth. We are well aware that Quinn was in the Royal Guard. It isn't necessary to continually go back to the same things over and over.And the ending was horrible. It's bad enough that TV shows leave you hanging at the end of the season, but to have a book do that, be a cliff hanger, literally, is disappointing and doesn't make me want me to buy the next book. For all I know at this point there may be 30 in the series and I will never have any closure for these characters!I read every book in the Sword of Truth series and all of the Game of Thrones (don't get me going on the last book in that series!) and felt the length of the books and the number of books in the series were justified. This is not a Jordon, Martin or Goodkind series, not really in that "epic" adventure category. I still gave it three stars but that is mainly based on the first two books.