Overall rating: 4 stars
Date Finished: November 26, 2016
The difficulty that I have with rating books in long series like this is that the rating of the one book is intricately linked to ongoing plot of all the previous books. You may be disappointed in one installment simply because of something that happened in previous book that you wanted resolved or built upon but it wasn't. And that makes it hard to love the individual book itself as much as you love the series as a whole.
Having said that, there are some things that I wanted further developed (most of with revolves around the relationship with Severn!). But there were also things within this book itself that were not fully explained.
This book is a bit world shaking in the sense that some of the things learned may completely change the world's view of Shadow and magic in general, and their understanding of the Ancients who were believed to be their creators. And while much of the book was spent theorizing and discussing this, it also felt that so little was actually, concretely understood. Most of the conversations were repetitions of the same theory but said by different characters or in slightly different ways.
And when we get to the big showdown at the end it seems like things are finally going to be understood and clarified but they aren't really. And I understand that in the cases where no one really knows what's going. What really frustrated me was the conversations between Helen, the familiar and Mandoran at the end. It seems that after everything that has happened they each have a very clear understanding of what is going on but no one seems to be able to describe it. It seems that everyone except Kaylin understands it, and since we are reading it from Kaylin's perspective, we can't understand it until she does! And that is so frustrating! The answer is right there, you even know who has the answer, but they just can't figure out a way to help her understand it.
There was no notable change in the relationship between Kaylin and Severn which was also disappointing. There does seem to be some subtle hinting at possible romance for Bellusdeo, although not with the Dragon you were expecting.
And yet, despite some of the things it was lacking, the book itself was full of so much more that I didn't find myself disappointed per se, just wanting more. And I will always have to conclude by simply saying that I love this series! I love the characters and this is one of the only long series like this where I feel like the characters really stay true to themselves throughout the whole process. While characters evolve, they never become unrecognizable. You will always have the same old Teela and same old Severn. You can always count of them and that is something that I have come to really enjoy in this series.
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