Return to the New York Times bestselling world of the Night Angel, where master assassin Kylar embarks on a new adventure as the High King Logan Gyre calls on him to save his kingdom and the hope of peace.
After the war that cost him so much, Kylar Stern is broken and alone. He's determined not to kill again, but an impending amnesty will pardon the one murderer he can't let walk free. He promises himself this is the last time. One last hit to tie up the loose ends of his old, lost life.
But Kylar's best--and maybe only--friend, the High King Logan Gyre, needs him. To protect a fragile peace, Logan’s new kingdom, and the king’s twin sons, he needs Kylar to secure a powerful magical artifact that was unearthed during the war.
With rumors that a ka'kari may be found, adversaries both old and new are on the hunt. And if Kylar has learned anything, it’s that ancient magics are better left in the hands of those he can trust.
If he does the job right, he won’t need to kill at all. This isn’t an assassination—it’s a heist.
But some jobs are too hard for an easy conscience, and some enemies are so powerful the only answer lies in the shadows. - from Netgalley.com
I received this eARC from Netgalley.com in exchange for an unbiased review.
**Spoilers Ahead**
Author Brent Weeks has taken years, but he has finally returned to the world of Night Angel. Most of NA's story can be found in the previous three books. This tale picks up shortly after where the last book ended.
I'm not sure how to express what I think about this story, so I'm just going to throw out my thoughts about it all...so it might sound confusing. I truly enjoyed the Night Angel series many years ago when I first came across them. I was happy I was able to get all three at the same time, so would not have to spend time waiting for 'the next book'. That trilogy ended well, and didn't leave a cliff-hanger for future novels. I was excited to see Weeks had decided to come back to this story world with a new tale(s). The further into the story I got, I started getting an unhappy feeling about where this tale was going. Throughout there is much internal conversation of the main character as to ethics, morals, and decisions he has made. In some places it was fairly long-winded and I would skim to get ahead of the wordiness. Otherwise the story flowed well, and I was happy, until the last few sections.
I didn't like how it ended. There wasn't any finalization, no cliff-hanger, just .. .the story ended. Does that mean the end of this series? I see some possibilities of how the tale could continue - Spin-off to Vi and her issues with the Chantry. It is alluded that Kylar was seeking to end his mortal life, but it was never confirmed, so maybe something happened there that will bring him back around. There is something about the babe, Caeden, one of the King's twin sons, that the story could be more focused there. And whatever did happen to the other twin? I don't remember reading anything happening to him, just that the twins were abducted, yet separately.
It was a lengthy novel to read, and took me several attempts - as I said there were some very wordy sections. In an afterword, Weeks says that he was challenged by another author (Scalzi) to keep it under 125K words, but the end result was still near 325K. So yeah, very wordy. But because I loved returning to the story, I will give it a four star rating.
No comments:
Post a Comment