The battle may be
over, but war is coming…
The Kingdom forces may
have won the first conflict but the enemy has a strong grip on Midkemia and
invasion now seems inevitable.
Arutha travels north
to confront the Dark Elves, but without help, Pug knows that Arutha’s forces
face slaughter. With Tomas he must scour the world – and beyond – to find the
one person with enough power to give them a chance.
If they fail, Midkemia
will be the first of many worlds to fall to a madman with the power to dominate
death itself…
A Darkness at
Sethanon concludes the Riftwar Saga, the
trilogy of epic fantasy novels that began with Magician and continued with Silverthorn. Thankfully, Feist steps things back up
a notch here after the rather poor showing of Silverthorn, and the result is a pleasantly fast-paced and suitably
epic conclusion to the first series within the Riftwar Cycle.
The Kingdom of the Isles is once again assailed by the dark
forces of Murmandamus, who is intent on annihilating anyone who stands in the
way of his march to Sethanon. Prince Arutha and his companions lead the
resistance against Murmandamus, while Pug and Tomas are forced to breach the
boundaries of space and time in search of the one man who can help them defeat
the forces of evil. Set almost a year after the events of Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon continues storylines set in
motion by the previous book, concluding them in a more-or-less satisfactory
way.
As with many of Feist’s other Riftwar books, A Darkness at
Sethanon isn’t terribly original. For instance, amongst the ‘good guys’ we
have magicians, elves, dwarves and dragons, whilst the ‘bad guys’ are mainly
composed of dark elves, goblins, trolls and snake priests. The bad guys are in
search of an all-powerful magical McGuffin known as the Lifestone, which will
destroy the world if it falls into the wrong hands. Not for the first time, I
found myself likening the series to the multitude of D&D games based on the
Forgotten Realms; and while this in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does
unfortunately mean that the word ‘derivative’
remained in the back of my mind throughout the duration of the novel.
Despite this, the final instalment of the Riftwar Saga remains an enjoyable read. A Darkness at Sethanon has a much more
epic feel than its predecessor: there are a lot more ambitious battles and exciting
sieges, and a lot less travelling around on horseback, with is definitely an
improvement. In fact, A Darkness at
Sethanon feels more like the ‘true’ sequel to Magician, with Silverthorn as
nothing more than a blip in between. It hints towards world building of a grand
scale previously only hinted at in Magician
and featuring only superficially in Silverthorn,
and although it goes into a huge amount of depth with regards to lore and
history we still get the feeling of barely scratching the surface, and of even
greater things to come.
The book isn’t perfect, and there are plenty of things to
gripe about, but I’m only going to mention one more, and that’s the cheesy,
exaggerated ‘happily ever after’ conclusion that characterises many of Feist’s
earlier novels. You know the type: royal rewards being dished out left, right
and centre, back-slapping all around, every wrong righted, happy endings galore,
etc. While it’s a nice change from a lot of the grimdark around at the moment,
nonetheless the pure cheesiness of it all does tend to grate somewhat.
Nonetheless, I was pleasantly surprised by Feist’s return to
form in A Darkness at Sethanon, and
am mightily excited to now be able to move on to his Empire trilogy. I just hope it’s as awesome as I remember . . .
4/5