We're here, the end of the first arc! It has been a ride with a great start and a decent to good middle. How's the conclusion? Let's see, spoilers ahead.
The team is re-united once again, this time against the true Devourer, Shane. But things take a turn for the worse when the evil ape Kovo is freed, and he intends on taking over the entire world, Conquerors as his victims included. It turns out that they'll not only have to stand against Kovo and Gerathon, but they also need to save a special tree known as the Evertree in order to save the world. And their new ally might end up being none other than Shane.
As a conclusion, I'd say that this one is pretty good. It's about as strong as the last book, which I also quite liked. There's a lot of action, there's some character development, more world-building, Shane becomes a semi-good guy (or at least somewhat of an ally) and the final standoff against Kovo, Halawir and Gerathon takes place.
So there's definitely a lot going on here and for the most part I think the book does a good job balancing it. However I still don't think it's as strong as the first few books in the series. For one, I'm disappointed to see that in this book (and the previous one), Rollan doesn't really feel like Rollan anymore. In the early books he was genuinely a little shit. He was rude, a loudmouth, liked making jabs at others and was very sarcastic. In these last two books he feels like a completely different character.
For the record, I don't have a problem with him slowly mellowing and becoming a more compassionate person who is more careful with his words. It actually makes sense for his character development. But like...pretty much all of his sarcastic and sharp-tongued personality is just outright gone by book seven. He now feels like just another bland friendly nice guy main character, and Conor already filled that role, so now they feel rather same-y character wise. I liked Rollan being a bit of an asshole, it made him a fun character. Heck, even in the later middle books he became a more gentle and friendly person but still had some edge to him, at least to some extent. Here, it's just pretty much gone. Which is a shame, because Rollan (rude Rollan) was my favorite character of the series.
Now, for a character who does get their time to shine here: god, I love Abeke in this book. She was cool in other books, too (I like how she always had a lot of compassion and never gave into pressure to let go of that), but she is on fire this book. Now that Shane has revealed himself as Conqueror she is so done with him and she's such a queen about it. At one point she's even about to kill him, and honestly I don't blame her after he has been manipulating her all along and she now finally finds out. But in the end her compassion still wins, though she also doesn't just instantly forgive him. Which is like, good. I like Abeke and I like how for the about the first time she's legit furious here, but she still doesn't let go of what makes Abeke Abeke; her compassion. So she was super well-written this book and definitely got her time to shine.
I'm also glad they didn't pull some last-minute enemies-to-loves romance between Shane and Abeke (which I was fearing they were building up to). It's not that there's no potential for a romance between them to happen in future books (though I think it's unlikely based on how Abeke currently feels about him), but it just would not have worked within this book. It'd have been too rushed, so this is a much more fitting ending for their characters.
As for the other two main characters, Conor and Meilin, I think they're both good and I'm especially glad that Meilin's conflict of being controlled by Gerathon got resolved. As for our Devourer Shane, I think they handled him pretty decently as well. I don't like him, but at least I can somewhat see his motivations now that they're explained. He genuinely wanted something better for Stetriol, he just had a (very) wrong way of going about it. And at least he did snap out of it and tried to help our heroes in the end. I'm also glad he's not just instantly forgiven. Sure, he does some things right in the end, but that doesn't mean that he's suddenly not the (past) Devourer anymore. He still has a lot to make up for, something which may be touched on in arc two, I think?
Kovo, Gerathon and to a lesser extent Halawir are also imposing villains, though I think Halawir is by far the least memorable because he doesn't get a lot of dialogue or page-time. Kovo, even more so than Gerathon, seems to be dead-set on achieving his goals this time around, no matter the cost. He's an imposing threat and overall, while I don't consider this trio to be very unique in the realm of villains, they're still written decently and do post a legit threat to the world and our heroes.
Something I'm not as fond of: the Evertree, basically the root of all life in Erdas, as well as the reason bonds between human and animal companion can happen. Trying to save the tree makes for a good final goal especially with Kovo trying to destroy it and make a staff out of it's branches (combined with the totems of the Great Beasts). I just...wish that the Evertree had been built up before. It turns out in this book that the Evertree not being well is basically the source of a lot of conflict. Not just the one with the Conquerors or Kovo and Gerathon, but also bonding sickness (when a bonding between an animal and a person goes wrong). Which is all fine and dandy, but in the prior books there has rarely if ever been brought up in prior books before this one. Like, I can't even think of any moments of foreshadowing. And now suddenly we're supposed to believe that saving the world hinges on saving this tree? Just feels like it comes right out of left field.
So, yeah, overall I consider this a pretty good conclusion. Lots of action; Abeke gets to truly shine; Kovo and Gerathon are legit threats and it's neat to see this world saved. But I'm also not a huge fan of how this book handled Rollan, and of course the Evertree never really being brought up before book seven.
As for the series as a whole, I'm a bit mixed. It started strong, but over the course of it it became a bit repetitive (main team travels to new location to meet new Great Beast to get their totem, they fight Conquerors, rinse and repeat). There's also the whole problematic cultural appropriation aspect which I have brought up in earlier reviews, and it still applies here, of course. The characters were overall pretty good, though (except Conor, I really don't have anything to say about him, he's just okay). And the world-building could be very interesting and well-thought-out at times.
But overall this is not one of my favorite fantasy series I have read. Don't get me wrong, I'm still glad I finally gave this series a chance after roughly a decade of putting off reading it, but it's not my favorite. I may or may not check out arc two in the future, who knows. Probably will give at least arc two book one a try.
Rating: 3.5/5
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