After Jo Clayton died in 1998, she left the unfinished manuscript and her notes for the final volume in this trilogy for Kevin Murphy to finish. I had a pretty good opinion of the first two books in the trilogy, but unfortunately, as I mentioned, this was a very ambitious work. I can't say for sure that Clayton herself would have done a much better job of realizing the potential of this story – it would have been difficult, I think. But as it stands, it just sort of wound up bogged down in too many characters and too many complicated political schemes shoved into too few pages. Since none of the characters really got (I felt) enough "page-time," they didn't really come alive for me, for much of the book. Which is really too bad, because the characters are really colorful and interesting, and I love complex political plots. But here, more than once, I found myself going, "Hang on... who just killed who? Why?" (or something similar.) It did pick up toward the end, where all the players begin to converge on the one physical spot that will be the point of the great showdown between all the mages, sorceresses, etc, and the Hero whose existence may serve to save the worlds of Iomard and Glandair.
Not bad, overall – but I can't help wishing it had been even better. ( )

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