| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Gricha |
Posted - 31 Aug 2011 : 18:31:23
The Spectral blaze is the third book of the brotherhood of the griffon by Richard Lee Byers and follow the group of sellswords after their battles in Thay.
The book starts like Unholy, the third book in the Haunted Lands trilogy started : the characters (and thus, the readers) learn the secret explaining the motivations of their opponents. And, like in Unholy, everything in the previous books make perfectly sense, leaving no question unanswered. I really appreciate that. It what nice to keep wondering during two books and then learning the characters had a deeper and unexpected purpose. It was very well done.
If the beginning of the book is great, the rest is just the same. While there are no more important revelations after the beginning, the story still manages to surprise the reader sometimes. But, in my opinions, the greatest quality of this books is the characters. They are many and they are all well-written and each of then get some screentime so they are all developped, thought I would have wanted some of them (nearly all of them) to appear a bit more, but you can't get enough of good characters.
The developpement of Aoth is really interesting. He started in the Haunted land trilogy has loner and he slowly started to have to command more and more troups. He now has to care for a large company and even if he pretends to be just a sellsword, he has a strong sense of justice and cannot help but do what is needed. It may be why his men are following him, they know they will fight for something good while earning some coins. His relationship with Cear is also interesting, the two of them make a nice couple.
But the most interesting character was Jhesrhi. Torn between her loyalties to the brotherhood and to Tchazzar, she has a difficult dilemma. Qhe is in a constant struggle with herself, trying to heal Tchazzar while spying on him and trying to overcome her fear of being touched. She was the most complex character of the book. And yet, despite all the did, she loses evrything she tried to build. At the end of the book, she seemed completely destroyed by what she lived and what happened to her. I really enjoy reading her developpment and am lookin forward to the next book.
The other characters were also great but they were not as complex as Jhesrhi, she eclipsed most of them, even if they were all well developped. I especialy enjoyed Tchazzar's madness and how his court slowly understand that he cannot be trusted, except Halonya.
The curse behind the game was a great idea and makes me wondering if it was a plan of Brimstone to kill some powerfull wyrms to gain power or if he was, too, under the curse. He has few screentime but he is an intersting enigma. I home he will appear more in future books.
To conclude, The Spectral blaze is a great read. It has string characters, and an interesting stories. It was an epic conclusion to a very good trilogy. I highly recommand this book. I am really looking forward to the sequel.
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| 2 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Merrith |
Posted - 23 Sep 2011 : 17:56:19
Agreed 100%. Loved this whole trilogy and the last book didn't disappoint. Watching Aoth develop and the expansion of "main" characters in the Brotherhood were great fun reading these books. It's clear RLB has more to tell about them as well, so will be eagerly awaiting their next trilogy as well.
As Gricha mentioned, loved the way all the little plot twists tied in by the end...and I especially enjoyed how all of the events happening around Chessenta (an area that was much changed by the Spellplague) helped to paint a nice description of the region in the current Realms timeline for me. Getting glimpses of Tymanther, High Imaskar, and Akanul was very interesting. |
| Dennis |
Posted - 23 Sep 2011 : 13:53:35
I already bought this, despite some reasonable hesitation. But it's kinda far on my To-Read list. |
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