Idols Fall

Shel is a truly gifted storyteller and he's woven a trilogy-capping book that is dark, twisty, funny, wholly satisfying, and bloody brilliant...major emphasis on the “bloody.”

Sometimes the third book in a series starts to feel stale if it's not charting new ground, but Shel has injected enough fresh energy into this story and its characters to pay off this final adventure splendidly. There's so much fantasy goodness packed into the pages here: demonic possession, talking swords, beasts from hell, false gods, geopolitical conflict, cults, and of course, a dangerous expedition into an ancient cursed ruin. It's all rendered beautifully on the page by Shel's delightful prose. Bump this trilogy up your TBRs folks. This is a masterful conclusion to an outstanding series.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

My thanks to the author for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

CAWPILE SCORE
C-7
A-7
W-6
P-5
I-5
L-4
E-5
TOTAL-5.57/10

What to think about this book. It was at least a little different from the first 2 books. I enjoyed the last 20% significantly more than the first 80%. Giving us more viewpoint characters was good.

CAWPILECharacters.I'm glad we see more of a personality from the Ush'oul inside agnes Sword. I'm also glad that at the end we are shown that the Ush'oul in general haven't really changed and are still after their own goals, whether that lines up with what the people around them want. Proof that her Sword was the one who killed or let everyone in their group get killed. I felt like all the characters aside from Agnes and Siri were brought together just to die. AtmosphereThe Atmosphere is engaging. Mike Shel does a great job of making you feel like you are in this dark world.WritingThe Writing is good. PlotWhile I enjoyed the plot and was glad to see that it didn't follow the exact same path as the first two books. I also enjoyed the POV split between Queen Ilanda and Agnes. I'm bothered again that by the time they get to the "god/s" the spellcaster is once again not there. Maestro's death was pointless and ridiculous at that point. he's seen things he'd never imagined before, but suddenly believes his dad might be alive and instantly rushes to him in the middle of a dungeon. but again with the Ush'oul protecting him. IntrigueWhile this book had a lot of questions that could've been intriguing, it was more frustrating to me that now we are adding gods, and Demon's and Devils, when before it was accepted as fact that just the Gods were there. LogicMostly followed its own train of logic, but i felt there were a few inconsistencies. mainly that if they required the Ush'oul to gain entrance they would also need it to leave because the enchantments wouldn't disappear immediately. I was very glad that Ilanda was able to put the Sword into a locked Chest and give up its power.EnjoymentI enjoyed this book more than the 2nd but less than the 1st book.
I will be talking about it on Libromancy 02/272022 https://libromancy.podbean.com/