It has been a busy few weeks for Private Kaylin Neya. In between angling for a promotion, sharing her room with the last living female Dragon and dealing with more refugees than anyone knew what to do with, the unusual egg she’d been given began to hatch. Actually, that turned out to be lucky, because it absorbed the energy from the bomb that went off in her quarters…
So now might be the perfect time to leave Elantra and journey to the West March with the Barrani. If not for the disappearances of citizens in the fief of Tiamaris – disappearances traced to the very Barrani Kaylin is about to be traveling with…
~~
This is just a damn good fantasy series, ok? Even eight books in Sagara continues to write intricate but believable characters, races, and personal histories. Where in some series you might get bogged down by just how many characters share the scene with the hero, in these it never feels like that. Each book might not work so great as a stand alone, especially at this point as the story arc stretches pretty far, but you get to know the players so well. Men and women remain distinct entities and as the reader you want to know how their story ends - or at least where it drifts off into them doing their own thing.
I guess after finishing this particular book my only complaint is that there wasn't more of it! There's kind of a cliff hanger ending, though the most immediate battle does reach a conclusion. I'm an impatient reader and when you've spent 90% of the book setting up this one event, suddenly being hit with a big battle that, while cool, slows down everything else....it makes me a little sad. I want to know what's going to happen between Nightside and Kaylin during the recitation. I want to know how the reading/telling/comprehension of this particular story is going to change what we've already become so familiar with. I won't say this felt like it was dragging, or even so much like a filler book, but it is definitely a step to something grander and having to wait for the next part is hard as hell.
Overall Feeling - A-
Series - ... 6) Cast in Chaos 7) Cast in Ruin 8) Cast in Peril
