Dust and Light: You call that an ending?

Dust and Light by Carol Berg

Really, Carol Berg?

I bought Dust and Light, your latest fantasy novel, because you wrote it, and because I loved the COLLEGIA MAGICA series. I had no idea you were going to do this to me.

I knew I was going to love your rich prose. In the first few pages, though, with great economy, you provided us with the big picture; a dead king, princes warring for a nation, a group of pureblood families who wield magic and go to extreme lengths to protect their bloodlines; rumors of an ancient, possibly mythical race called the Danae; and our narrator Lucien, who has failed his family and lost nearly everyone he loves. I liked his rebellious young sister Juli. I liked the way you showed us a character already in jeopardy, and then piled on more jeopardies, hard and fast. Just when I thought things could not get worse for Lucien, they got worse.

I liked how elegantly you laid out his backstory, his transgression with a non-magical or “ordinary” woman, the savage retribution exacted by his beloved grandfather, who tried to excise half of Lucien’s magic. I was delighted by Lucien’s early reversal of fortune and the commedia dell’arte-style introduction of the necropolis where he now works, and the multi-layered characters who people it — people like Constance, with her ethereal white draperies, her working-class background and her trick of mangling words, leaving Lucien mystified, and how ultimately he realizes that the whole city of the dead functions because of her. I loved Lucien’s quest for justice for a murdered child, a quest that pits him against two major power structures, one political and one spiritual. And I was completely sucked into the bigger mystery, too.

Of course I loved the details and the descriptions, like the cloaks and masks the purebloods wear, like the way Lucien’s gift manifests, the art, the flames, the shadows and the grit of a city teetering on the brink of riot, in a country in the midst of a civil war. I especially loved the way, with a first person narrator, you gave us a cloistered, stiff-necked, hidebound character who is forced to open his mind and his heart as he comes to realize that the story of his life and his legacy is merely that; a story.

I had a few quibbles, too. I thought Lucien made the same choice over and over, and then dithered about it, but I was willing to live with that because, I mean really… it was so rich, so intriguing and so suspenseful.

But then — that ending.

Seriously?

I understand a cliffhanger ending. That wasn’t a cliffhanger. That was a catastrophic landslide, an 8.3-on-the-Richter-scale-earthquake, a TV-show-Dallas-reboot-let’s-burn-down-Southforks ending.

Did you really think I wouldn’t buy the next book? With such a broad canvas, with so many interesting themes playing out, so many questions unanswered, were you that unsure of yourself?

Honestly.

Well, I am going to read the next one, but only because, a) you’re a really good writer and b) until that ending, Dust and Light was great.

I’m glad we’ve had this little talk, but, seriously now; please don’t make me come back here again.