Book Review: Oath Breaker by Michelle Paver (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #5)

 

Can't believe I'm almost done with the original run of these books. Yes, we are currently getting a few more than was originally intended, but so far I only have books one through six due to the Dutch translations not going beyond that. So let's see what Oath Breaker has in store for us, shall we? Spoilers ahead?

After his kinsman and close friend Bale is killed, Torak sets out on a quest of vengeance against Thiazzi, one of the last remaining Soul Eaters and the culprit of the murder. Renn and Wolf tag along once more, and they now must travel into the Deep Forest and meet the unhospitable clans there if they want to survive and succeed in their quest. Torak must learn what the cost of revenge can be.

Out of the books past Wolf Brother of this arc, I feel like this was the one I probably liked the least. It's still worth 4/5 stars if you ask me, but I do feel like it's on the lower end of the spectrum when compared to some of the others past the first book. I can't quite tell why this is.

Maybe it's the location? For all its buildup, I didn't quite care about the Deep Forest location. I do appreciate that we travel to a new part of Torak's realm in every book that I've looked at so far, but this is just one setting I didn't much connect with.

That said, I did think that Thiazzi was a decent villain. Not amazingly or anything, but he did his job fine. I do have some gripes with the villainess of book six, but I did like Thiazzi's general threat and how he managed to infiltrate not one but two clans as their Mage, that's quite impressive. But, that said, he isn't very interesting. 

That's honestly one flaw I did find with the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series so far. Out of all the antagonists/villains, I still think the one that worked the very best was the possessed bear from the first book, not any of the Soul Eaters. Just an inhuman force of nature and spirituality that is almost unstoppable. If I had to pick a favorite "real" villain out of books one through six, it'd have to be Fenris of the second book. He wasn't that great, either, but I did like how two-faced he was and his relation to Torak. One of the rare instances of me liking a twist villain. But overall the other villains (Thiazzi, Eostra and Seshru) aren't pretty weak. There's also that one Soul Eater whose name I forgot who dies in book three, but just the fact that I can't remember her name is already telling enough of how much of an impact she left on me.

Still, I did really enjoy this book. I was very heartbroken to see Bale bite the dust, especially after he proved to be such a bro to Torak in the last book. See you in the next (and for a while, last), Chronicles of Ancient Darkness review!

Rating: 4/5