Robert V. S. Redick

And we are done. The final book of the Chathrand Voyages tetralogy is over and I am left with a bittersweet taste, as befits the ending. Mr. Redick is a ruthless narrator, perhaps too much so. Not because he is not afraid to kill important characters, but because he often does not feel the need to close the circle of their personal stories and give us readers a sense of closure. Whether this works is a matter of taste. It is not fully satisfactory, but perhaps it gives us a sense of realism not often found in epic fantasy, a feeling that life just goes on, that we often don't get neat endings and not all is perfect even after a big threat has been defeated. Soon new ones will appear, although perhaps they will be for different heroes to fight.

Coming back to this story, I feel bad to only give four stars out of five to a tale so ambitious, with so many strong points and things to commend. However, I have the feeling that it might have been even better. When you see so much inspiration and potential for greatness you also become more demanding.

Let's see. Never since The Lord of the Rings have I seen a fantasy world with such a feeling of depth as Alifros. The richness of the setting is incredible. It feels fresh and new, always with new wonders to surprise us and captivate our imagination.

At the same time, the character work is excellent. All of them feel like real people, complex, with virtues and flaws that only make it easier to care for them. The cast is large, not so much for the total number of characters but for the number of fully-drawn characters. Perhaps that becomes a problem. So much attention is paid to the background and stories of each character that sometimes we are in danger of losing focus on the story being told here. When authors get asked for a new tale set in their more famous fictional world, often they write a story fleshing out one of the side characters. In this series, those stories are already included in the books. Again, it's a matter of opinion. For some it will be awesome. Others might have preferred a tighter narrative. I was somewhere in the middle. I loved all those background stories (they are good!) and I cared about the characters, but at the same time I felt a certain sense of detachment from the main storyline. When an important antagonist was defeated it sometimes felt underwhelming, like an afterthought.

I have just finished reading the story and I miss it. It's a feeling I have with the really great epic fantasies. I feel that this will be one of the rare series that I read again. I'm surprised that it is not talked about much more often. Read it! It's not perfect, but it has a lot of personality and you will find things here that other epic fantasy stories won't be able to give you. I'd like to express my admiration for the author and hope that he will keep writing and giving us stories as memorable as this one.… (more)

Redick doesn't falter in the third part of the Chathrand Voyage tetralogy. We still have the outstanding wordbuilding we have become used to in this series, the good characters, and the epic story. I would detract half a star because I still think that sometimes the pacing of the story is a bit too slow, and some of the magical/dream scenes I did not enjoy as much as the rest. However, since the site doesn't allow half stars, I will give it the whole 5 stars.

Even though it may seem cliched that the main adversary is kind of a dark lord wannabe, the sheer inventiveness of the setting prevents this from becoming predictable. There's a lot to like here.… (more)

This is book 2 of the Chathrand Voyage tetralogy. It continues right where the first book ended, and they need to be read in order to appreciate the story.

As already happened in The Red Wolf Conspiracy (TRWC), the worldbuilding is masterful, the characters appealing and the story epic in scope and filled with powerful magic and terrible revelations. The plot is tighter and more linear here than in the first book. That is probably for the better, since TRWC sometimes felt a bit scattered.

I'm giving it four instead of five stars because for some time in the middle of the book I felt that the pace was lagging. Things were always going on and there is always some new detail about the world or about the characters to reward your patience, but it seemed that little of consequence happened and the overall plot progressed too slowly. These are massive novels and when you get that feeling you start to think that some stricter editing would have been for the better.

Nevertheless, towards the end of the plot accelerated and the ending is breathtaking. Thankfully I'm reading this when the tetralogy is already complete and I can go straight to the third book.… (more)