King of Sword and Sky by C.L. Wilson
King of Sword and Sky is longer than either of the previous two Tairen Soul books, but for me, it breezed by so quickly, I could hardly believe it. King of Sword and Sky continues several plotlines from the earlier books, resolves a really huge one, and ends with a heck of a bang.
We follow Rain and Ellie as they travel to the Fading Lands, where they set out to prepare the Fey for war with the Eld and attempt to save the tairen from the mysterious decline they’ve been suffering. They meet with resistance from many influential Fey. C.L. Wilson does a great job of depicting this opposition without demonizing it. These Fey, after all, don’t know that Ellie and Rain are the protagonists. All they know is that their king has suddenly decided he wants to take a more active role in state affairs, that his new wife may be tainted by the evil Mages, and that the two of them are turning almost all of the time-honored traditions of the Fey upside down. We can see why they’re suspicious even as we know our heroes are right.
The mystery of the tairen deaths is really well-done. We get to meet, and grow to love, a number of the great cats. Their situation is tragic, yet they also provide some hilarious moments of comic relief (I especially loved Steli’s difficulty with knocking on doors), and the result is that they are well-rounded and the reader really feels for them. The solution to the mystery, when it comes, is absolutely diabolical — I didn’t figure it out until just before the characters did, and it’s a doozy!
King of Sword and Sky contains several scenes that are gorier than any we’ve seen previously in the series. We get to see more of what goes on within the Mage stronghold of Boura Fell, and let’s just say they don’t adhere to the Geneva Conventions there. However, the scenes in Boura Fell show something else, too: discontent brewing right under Vadim Maur’s nose. I can’t wait to see what becomes of this subplot.
The novel ends with an epic two-front battle, and for some beloved characters, a cliffhanger. The story continues with the release of Queen of Song and Souls, next week (book four of five). I’ve got a review copy, so I’ll get that review out soon!
Tairen Soul — (2007-2010) Romantic fantasy. Publisher: Long ago, in the magical holocaust known as the Mage Wars, the immortal Fey and their allies fought to defeat the grasping evil of the Elden Mages and their dark-gifted supporters. During those wars, in a fit of grief-induced madness caused by the death of his mate, Fey shapeshifter Rain Tairen Soul nearly destroyed the world in a blaze of tairen fire. Now, a thousand years later, the fierce Fey king must fight to save his race from the brink of extinction and once again stop the evil rising in the homeland of his enemies, the Eld. The key to his success lies in the mortal city of Celieria, where the Mage Wars began, and with a young woman whose soul sings to him in ways no woman’s ever has, whose presence reawakens the primal fury of the tairen within his soul, and whose vast, untapped power can either save or destroy him and his people.
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