Unholy

A very satisfactory ending to a trilogy that didn't start off so well for me. Book 3 begins about a century after the events of book 2... a century?! Yes, apparently, this is the start of 4th Edition D&D. I was initially starting to doubt my enjoyment of this book but it slowly unfolds with perfectly valid reasons for the timeline.

The main thing I found really good was character development. You would expect characters that started off in book 1 would be more or less fully developed already, but this book puts our protagonists of Aoth, Bareris, and Mirror through new challenges and new self-realisations. While I started off not quite liking them, at the end, I was turned around. And not just on them - plenty of development and focus on the zulkirs, Malark, Szass Tam, and even Aoth's lieutenants.

I loved the solid pacing of this book - it's never a slow pace - it just builds up towards the finale conflicts. And speaking of that, the finale was superbly done - switching between different view points and two separate conflicts smoothly. If I have to complain, I suppose the battle scenes towards the end was getting a bit too unrealistic, just by logically thinking about the number of casualties there must've been. But it doesn't detract from the action at all.

A great ending to a devious plot, and a great beginning to 4th Edition (for me anyway).