The Obsidian Oracle

And just when I thought the series was picking up after book 3...

Book 4 focused on Agis and Tithian, as they sought to recover the Dark Lens (see book 3). The two long-time “friends” being forced to work together felt contrived, especially Tithian's so-called reflection moments explaining his motives for not wanting to kill Agis. It's just not realistic. Same thing with Agis and his “reasonings” - very forced. I used to find Agis “ok” in the earlier books, but after this one, I found him pathetic and annoying, and entirely not believable as a person. Also, he very stupidly got himself whacked. Deservedly. Thank goodness.

Lore-wise is about the only thing that's a plus. We get to see Balic and a new sorcerer-king, plus the giants of Athas, and most interestingly the Sea of Silt and actual ship battles. Granted, it wasn't very well-described (way too much things dying when there didn't seem that many to start off with - same thing applies to the finale battle), but still, it's something different for me.

Speaking of battles, the author gave his characters “wounds”. It's in quotation marks because they are really just superficial inconveniences, since it doesn't really stop them from performing mostly normally, despite how grievous they were described to be. Examples? A broken arm, getting magically aged and having muscles torn, being impaled on sharp rock (and then pulled free with no medical attention), having your jugular vein exposed... And I'm not even going to go into how it seems to flout rules on psionics and dehydration.

Continuity-wise... there was a glaring oversight if you're even a little familiar with the lore of the ravagers - the plot mentions them, where each champion was sent to massacre a race. A disturbing chicken and egg issue - but won't apply to most readers I guess. There was a champion to exterminate giants, yet this book claims the giants originated from Jo'orsh and Saram. I had trouble swallowing this explanation of how a race of giants can be born/evolved out of dwarves.

I won't be have any expectations at all for the final book - just want to finish the series and be done with it.