Entertaining escapist fantasy with characters that we have come to enjoy from the previous books and stories.
Great fun! ( )

This isn't a book you can just pick up and read, without knowing what's gone before. Tempus, Niko, and the rest are all old friends if you've read all (or even many) of the books preceding, but I don't think anything will make much sense in this book without knowing the characters already.

There are still two books to follow, as well (Tempus Unbound, and Storm Seed). ( )

As a subgenre of fantasy, sword and sorcery has never really captured my attention. I read this book because it was on my bookshelf and I wanted to give it a try.

First off, a disclaimer. This is the 7th book in a series, apparently, and I have not read any of the others, nor am I familiar with the shared universe premise on which it its based. And after this book, I can tell you that I'm never going to be, either.

This book is rife with every sort of purple prose, shallow characterization, pseudo-Biblical claptrap, and Mary-Sue wish fulfillment you can imagine. Books of this sort are why fantasy literature had such a bad name for so long.

Presumably earlier volumes introduced us to the main characters Tempus, Niko, and Jihan, because at no point does this book attempt to acquaint me with them. They are flat and undeveloped from the first, and remain so to the final page.

The characters which were (presumably) new to this volume are given no greater effort. Oddly enough, much of the book involves the reader watching the villains struggle and fail against the heroes--yet they are clearly antagonists, straight-line evil without redeeming quality. The result is a strange dichotomy, a complete lack of tension for the heroes paired with a mild curiosity as we wonder how the villains will get out of their next mess.

In short, this is a textbook of how not to write fantasy, or encouragement to anyone that has tried that little skill is necessary to do so.

Recommendation: Not recommended; or rather, recommended only to those who read this recommendation and got angry because I trashed a book they had planned to read anyway. ( )