Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsLimping Towards The End
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 7, 2022
To some extent the Mother/Son duo of Jadora & Jak are responsible for
the loss of thousands of lives and the near destruction of their world.
In particular, Jadora would never have dropped her first love, herbology,
to become an archeologist if her son Jak had not been determined to
continue his late father's quest for the World Gate. Sure you can blame
King Uthari, who is in fact a complete SOB, but they set the ball rolling,
and look at the state of things now!
Instead of contacting the fondly remembered Elder Dragons, and finding an
ally for normal humans against the oppressive mages, the World Gate has
unleashed the Younger Dragons on Torvil, and they are raining destruction
on human and mage alike. If that is not enough, Uthari has taken actions
that prevent a coordinated response against the dragons, released a
parasite of unknown deadliness on the world as well, and ordered Jak's death.
All of the power gifted to Jadora by the one surviving Elder Dragon is
not enough to deal with any part of the situation, and in the end the only
hope may be yet another fraught expedition through the World Gate as Torvil
crumbles..
I'm afraid this series continues to be a bit of a mess with too
many characters, and events unfolding with frustrating slowness.
As I have said before, I appreciate that Buroker is trying to do
something bigger and more involved than her previous series, but
here in the penultimate book of the series it still seems that she
had bitten off somewhat more than she can chew. We do finally get
resolution on some points which have dragged on for far too
long, like the situation of General Tonovan and Malek's unwillingness
to commit, but there continue to be characters with no
clear purpose (still talking about you Tezi!) and some of plot
lacunae. For instance, when King Uthari orders Jak's killing,
Captain Rivlen takes the call, and very much does not wish this to happen
as Jak is now her lover. The clear argument to use with her King
would be: "Well, have you gotten everything you need from his mother
then? Oh, you haven't? Well I guess it wasn't that important after all.
Oh, it's *critically* important? Then maybe you might want to hold
off on killing her only child.." Yet somehow this is not an idea
that occurs to this highly intelligent and composed character.
I've held on this long, so I'll get the final book, but really I can't
recommend you start this series.
