The ending ruined the series.

The narrator was good, as always. This book however was not as good as its predecessors. I enjoyed the previous books very much. Especially that they were upbeat and mostly happy fast paced stories. This ending however killed the series for me. Too sad ending and for someone who acts like she wants to talk everything out she really has the tendency to not talk about things and simply do things however she feels like. Of course I recognise that A. does this too but this extreme hypocrisy and unwillingness to talk or seek fault in herself makes her as unlikable as her stepfather...
However Except for the last few chapters I really enjoyed all of it and I am sad to see this series end. I hope that there will be more books by Kevin Hearne like this one. Thank you for these stories.

7 Leute fanden das hilfreich

Underwhelming ending for an epic story

The good part first: I love, how Christopher Ragland narrates the story! It is really a joy, listening to him.

However, story wise this last book of the series is an absolute catastrophe! It feels like Kevin Hearne lost his memory, read a summery of the story so far, and wrote a bad fan fiction, while reinventing the personalities of the main characters:
I always pictured Atticus as some kind of paranoid, bad-ass genius, who constantly “cocked things up” but always tried to make up for that as best he could. In this book however he becomes a guilt-ridden pushover, who knows most of the things that happen in this book in advance, and doesn’t even prepare in the slightest.
Meanwhile Granuaile becomes a “feminist tyrant”, who is no longer interested in changing people for the better, but rather just judging everyone who doesn’t conform to her modern worldview.
While the development of the morrigan, was kind of foreshadowed, she also simply lost her old character in this book, and got a new one.
The same happened for Thor, which is the most unbelievable change ever. The character development, which is kind of in lines with the previous books is Owens, who is still easy to anger, but tries his best to become a better person, not repeat the mistakes of the past.

The plot itself feels like invented on the spot, by an underprepared dungeon master in a dnd game. A lot of meaningless side quests and the battle itself feels like written in a single afternoon. It was supposed to be the battle of the century. Instead we get an enumeration of who is there and then they fight.... with swords and shields. Where are the modern weapons, the dwarfs as well as the draugr were supposed to have developed.

Which brings me to the next point: There are soooo many inconsistencies in this book.
-The draugr suddenly get the ability to become kind of incorporeal similar to the Sfartalfar. If they could do that, a lot of the previous battles should have turned out differently in my opinion.
-The dwarfs developed blades to cut the sfartalfar, but never thought of developing something similar against the draugr? That feels highly unlikely.
-Brigid and Atticus were able to halt an entire army of dwarfs by themselves in previous books, but here they just fight with swords and without magic except for making them stronger/faster?


I have read some comments along the lines of “you have to have a certain maturity in order to appreciate this book”. If that is the case I am obviously not mature enough because the values depicted in this book don’t seem to be the ones I would like to adhere to. And in the end, I read books like these in order to enjoy myself, which sadly was not the case at all.

All in all, as much as it pains me, to write this, I cannot recommend anyone to read or listen to this book.

Tiefsinnig und unterhaltsam

Das Buch enthält einige wichtige Lebenslektionen. Aber vielleicht versteht man die erst, wenn man selbst eine gewisse Reife erlangt hat.