Okay, so I've been reading this series for close to 3 years now. Which kind of sucks because I hate it when you have to wait for new books to be released every year. Otoh, it could be worse. I could REALLY really like A Song of Ice and Fire. (That's Game of Thrones to all you TV watchers)
So what's new in this last book from William King? Well, the previous book ended with the invasino of Averlorn. Those who are familiar with High Elf history in Warhammer Fantasy will be familiar with that series of events. Malekith; King of the Dark Elves, basically launches a sneak attack on the High Elves and attempts to kidnap the Everqueen; living goddess of the High Elves. Tyrion saves her, having been at Averlorn due to happenstance and then they run away from the Dark Elves. Eventually Teclis; Tyrions brother, saves them from a greater demon and the gang gets together to fight Malekith with the HE army and eventually repel the DE invasion.
This is that story, but in a much longer form than the short excerpts in the HE codex. And here's the issue with that. The series of events is fixed which means there's almost nothing that will surprise you. And I suspect it affected Kings writing as well, as his writing seems much more formulaic in this installment, as if he was just writing out what he had to write without any spirit. I suppose there wasn't much he could have deviated from GW's view of the HE history but it really felt like something was lacking. I'm not sure, but I'd have to get the opinion of someone who DIDN'T read the HE codex and who read this to know if it's just me (because I know the ending already from the HE codex) or whether this just felt uninspired.
Thing I did like though, the new 4 assassins that Malekith sent after Tyrion and the Everqueen. I really felt they could have used more screentime but they were only shown in a few scenes then they fight Tyrion once and they die. Which was sad because they were probably the only thing King really had creative control over since they were his own creations. And we all know King excels when he has creative control (see first few Gotrek and Felix books)
Things I didn't like though. The scenes between death and Caledor playing chess. Why? Why was this in the book? Some sort of meta subplot? It doesn't even explain anything on why Caledor is playing or why Death is using chaos warriors or so on. Seriously, I did not get the entire subplot with them and by extension, I didn't really enjoy it. I keep wondering why it was included.
Also, the romance could really have been done better. But this is William King, who has never really been great at writing Romance in the few books I've read of his. so I guess that's to be expected.
Overall, this was a pretty average book. I may even go so far as to say slightly sub-par really, especially from King. Seriously, the guy can write better. However, if you've read the first 2 books of the trilogy, you might as well finish this as well.
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