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4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
Here we are thirty books later. What am I going to do with my life after this??
It's been a long long road. I haven't read every single book in the saga, toward the end it just started to feel repetitive, I missed Jimmy and Arutha and I just wasn't as invested in the latter generations of the conDoins even as I enjoyed meeting new characters like Tal.
But this was a really lovely ending and it was nice to have a new generation of conDoins that really hearken back to Lyam and Arutha
But this was a really lovely ending and it was nice to have a new generation of conDoins that really hearken back to Lyam and Arutha
The end of this trilogy was profoundly better than the previous two. Lots of things explained, the end (finally, bar that little bit of dread). The goodbyes really got me - oh Kulgan! And Borric too (the twin, not the og). It was nice to see bit more of Nakors life story (a travelling fair, how very Nakor).
The Hal twist was mildly surprising (I’d anticipated James plan), the Tomas plot more so, and the waiting Gods was a nice touch.
Overall a fitting end - finally - to what felt like a never ending series. I still feel like his best works were the first two series, the empire books and the original three riftwar cycles. Perhaps I’d also consider the conclave of shadows (first two books only), the rest fell flat and were overly convoluted with the past.
Very glad to be done!
The Hal twist was mildly surprising (I’d anticipated James plan), the Tomas plot more so, and the waiting Gods was a nice touch.
Overall a fitting end - finally - to what felt like a never ending series. I still feel like his best works were the first two series, the empire books and the original three riftwar cycles. Perhaps I’d also consider the conclave of shadows (first two books only), the rest fell flat and were overly convoluted with the past.
Very glad to be done!
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
How do you rate a book that you skimmed for more than half... but still felt like you'd miss it when you were over? Sure, it's partly because of nostalgia for the series, but there's a conclusion here that harks back to Feist at his best, despite so much repetition (both within the book and of stuff from the series) and unnecessary waffling that he could've probably cut the book down to 150 pages without losing all that much.
The story thread following the 'human' characters is dull. REALLY dull. He literally says at one point none of it matters if Pug and co don't save the day from the magical threat. They're all characters we've seen a million times and do the same things over and over. Jim Dasher is beyond boring, despite being a rehash of one of the best characters from the golden era. I didn't need a whole chapter of Brendan on a boat in a storm that reads like Feist had been on a sailing trip recently and wanted to share it with us. Hal and Martin are nothing characters. The civil war story barely overlaps with the main threat facing the universe - at one point we're told it's all been set up to draw attention, but I don't know what good any of the human armies would be and the Conclave didn't get involved in the civil war, so... and I have no real idea why I'm supposed to care who was king in Rillanon at the end of the day, because none have them have done anything productive for like 4 series.
The magical journey that is set up as a massive cliffhanger in the previous book is like a flashback episode of your favourite sitcom. Remember all these old characters/stories you loved in previous series? We'll stick them together with a thinly constructed narrative to remind some main characters of something that'll help in the last five minutes of runtime. Other than repeating a few key phrases waaaay too many times during the final battle, I'm not really sure any of it helped them.
We also get the traditional Macros infodump - despite being long dead he's still got way more info and power that Pug and Magnus can dream of, even though they're now really old with whole teams of people, and he was one guy on his own. The whole thing descends into some pseudo-profound Platonic philosophy that anyone with a network of global wizards and priests who seem to understand metaphysics and multiple dimensions could have thought up in half an hour. The nature of his gods and reality is completely muddied in this discussion, as it doesn't match up at all with the various planes of existence Feist has introduced (e.g., why can the gods influence different planes of reality and to some extent worlds when they're a construct of the humans on those worlds. Why do the gods have huge powers to some extent, if they're also just a driving force for humans helping themselves and can only push people in the right direction to stop a universe-ending threat. Also... wtf are the angels that were briefly mentioned and dragged Pug and co to a different plane of reality and back and never appear again? I would much rather they been explained and cut out all the waffle that makes the gods not make a lot of sense ). We find out the nature of the threat in a mashup of astrophysics and more bastardised philosophy - and again I have no real idea how this played into the final conflict except repeating some generic phrases over and over until Pug unlocked a new power like a Shonen protagonist. This is a far cry from Pug and Tomas going on epic journeys into uncharted territory to find out secrets that could change their understanding of reality and magic.
And yet, the climax of dragons, magicians and rifts, and a finale with the gods, took me right back to the end of the first series. And the radical description of the magical aftermath, followed by a charming 'epilogue' final chapter (after the civil war aftermath is resolved *yawn*) is just like that quaint, original introduction to lonely Crydee and it's familiar, yet new, world... It felt like a great dungeon master setting up his next adventure, and I wish we could get back to that. Tell me more aboutCrydee, now cut off. About Magnus, 'rebuilding his Jedi order'. About Lims-Kragma's plan and why she's reincarnated Pug... - the personal stories about lonely humans in isolated, magical places, and the scheming of the great gods of this world who have always seemed unique to me (a strange blend of the Greek pantheon's ambivalent, chaotic interference and with a D&D system's magical blessing and moral code).
I wish I could believe that's where Feist will go with his new series and later return to Midkemia, but sadly having seen the synopsis of his next series I think he's sticking with the blandly characterised, medieval political drama and I can't take any more.
The story thread following the 'human' characters is dull. REALLY dull. He literally says at one point none of it matters if Pug and co don't save the day from the magical threat. They're all characters we've seen a million times and do the same things over and over. Jim Dasher is beyond boring, despite being a rehash of one of the best characters from the golden era. I didn't need a whole chapter of Brendan on a boat in a storm that reads like Feist had been on a sailing trip recently and wanted to share it with us. Hal and Martin are nothing characters. The civil war story barely overlaps with the main threat facing the universe - at one point we're told it's all been set up to draw attention, but I don't know what good any of the human armies would be and the Conclave didn't get involved in the civil war, so... and I have no real idea why I'm supposed to care who was king in Rillanon at the end of the day, because none have them have done anything productive for like 4 series.
The magical journey that is set up as a massive cliffhanger in the previous book is like a flashback episode of your favourite sitcom. Remember all these old characters/stories you loved in previous series? We'll stick them together with a thinly constructed narrative to remind some main characters of something that'll help in the last five minutes of runtime. Other than repeating a few key phrases waaaay too many times during the final battle, I'm not really sure any of it helped them.
We also get the traditional Macros infodump - despite being long dead he's still got way more info and power that Pug and Magnus can dream of, even though they're now really old with whole teams of people, and he was one guy on his own. The whole thing descends into some pseudo-profound Platonic philosophy that anyone with a network of global wizards and priests who seem to understand metaphysics and multiple dimensions could have thought up in half an hour. The nature of his gods and reality is completely muddied in this discussion, as it doesn't match up at all with the various planes of existence Feist has introduced (
And yet, the climax of dragons, magicians and rifts, and a finale with the gods, took me right back to the end of the first series. And the radical description of the magical aftermath, followed by a charming 'epilogue' final chapter (after the civil war aftermath is resolved *yawn*) is just like that quaint, original introduction to lonely Crydee and it's familiar, yet new, world... It felt like a great dungeon master setting up his next adventure, and I wish we could get back to that. Tell me more about
I wish I could believe that's where Feist will go with his new series and later return to Midkemia, but sadly having seen the synopsis of his next series I think he's sticking with the blandly characterised, medieval political drama and I can't take any more.
This and my other reviews can be found at http://amethystbookwyrm.blogspot.co.uk/
Thanks to Edelweiss and Harper Voyager for giving me this book to review.
This is the final book of the series, in which the Kingdom of the Isles has been plunged into civil war by the death of King Gregory and the reluctance of the Congress of Lords to appoint his successor. Hal, Duke of Crydee, and his brothers Martin and Brendan, along with Jim Dasher Jamison and his grandfather Lord James are trying to prevent hostilities breaking out. At the same time Pug, Marcus, Nakor, as reincarnated by Belog, and Miranda, as reincarnated by Child, have been caught in a trap by the Adversary, and have been transported to a higher realm, and may not be able to return to save Midkemia.
Magicians End is a fitting finale to this epic fantasy series, which has spanned 30 years and 30 books consisting of series, collaborations and even a game tie-in series. The epilogue will be appreciated by those who have read and enjoyed the first book Magician. Magician’s End is a very hard going book and feels much longer than it actually is; however, if you are a fan of the series DO NOT miss this book, as it ties up all the loose threads from throughout the rest of the series, whilst leaving the ability for a sequel series if Raymond E. Feist decides to.
My favourite characters are Pug and Thomas, as we have seen them grow and develop throughout the whole series, from youth’s entering into apprenticeship, to the Greater Path magician Milamber and Ashen-Shugar, to the Duke of Stardock and consort of the Elven Queen, to what they are today.
I would only recommend Magician’s End to those who have read and enjoyed the rest of the series, but would recommend this series to those who enjoyed King’s Blades by Dave Duncan, and the Belgariad by David Eddings.
Thanks to Edelweiss and Harper Voyager for giving me this book to review.
This is the final book of the series, in which the Kingdom of the Isles has been plunged into civil war by the death of King Gregory and the reluctance of the Congress of Lords to appoint his successor. Hal, Duke of Crydee, and his brothers Martin and Brendan, along with Jim Dasher Jamison and his grandfather Lord James are trying to prevent hostilities breaking out. At the same time Pug, Marcus, Nakor, as reincarnated by Belog, and Miranda, as reincarnated by Child, have been caught in a trap by the Adversary, and have been transported to a higher realm, and may not be able to return to save Midkemia.
Magicians End is a fitting finale to this epic fantasy series, which has spanned 30 years and 30 books consisting of series, collaborations and even a game tie-in series. The epilogue will be appreciated by those who have read and enjoyed the first book Magician. Magician’s End is a very hard going book and feels much longer than it actually is; however, if you are a fan of the series DO NOT miss this book, as it ties up all the loose threads from throughout the rest of the series, whilst leaving the ability for a sequel series if Raymond E. Feist decides to.
My favourite characters are Pug and Thomas, as we have seen them grow and develop throughout the whole series, from youth’s entering into apprenticeship, to the Greater Path magician Milamber and Ashen-Shugar, to the Duke of Stardock and consort of the Elven Queen, to what they are today.
I would only recommend Magician’s End to those who have read and enjoyed the rest of the series, but would recommend this series to those who enjoyed King’s Blades by Dave Duncan, and the Belgariad by David Eddings.
And so I finish book 31 of The Chaoswar Saga. This review is largely going to be about the series as a whole (though the rating is for the book itself). Overall, the book was 'good' and managed to be both satisfying and a little disappointing at the same time. I think I wanted more from the ending novel to a series that ran for 30 years, but I couldn't tell you precisely what was lacking.
I first read Magician: Apprentice maybe nearly 25 years ago as a kid and didn't continue the series past that until July 2021, when I decided to restart it. It's quite remarkable how much the series evolved over its 30 years. It began with, by today's standards (unfair, as it was undoubtedly very influential in forming those tropes), a pretty by-the-numbers Bildungsroman style story about an orphaned castle boy becoming the castle magician's apprentice. And if you reach the end, you'll have read metatextual descriptions of the base elements of matter (the manipulation of them being 'magic', which doesn't actually exist), investigations of how gods are created by people (not vice versa), entire worlds being destroyed, rifts between galaxies, time manipulation, and much more. Characters are born and die of old age, their children join the cast, and likewise exit the stage. It's quite a remarkable series.
Once the series was established, by and large, Feist concerned himself with two classes of characters (with some notable exceptions). The first is Pug, the titular Magician, and those like him - his family, and other members of Stardock and the Enclave of Shadows, which are mostly a collection of magicians who work to safeguard the world of Midkemia. The second are the non-magical nobles of the Kingdom of the Isles, largely members of the conDoin family from Crydee, where the first book begins. Without exception, I enjoyed the time spent with the second class of characters quite a bit more than the first. The stories featured interesting (if somewhat simplistic) political maneuvering with lots of swordplay, espionage, and other exciting elements. Characters like Arutha, Jimmy the Hand, Eric von Darkmoor, and Talwin Hawkins fall into this collection.
By contrast, I didn't have an especially strong affinity for Pug, the lynchpin of the entire series. My favorite books were those in which he didn't even appear ([b:Daughter of the Empire|589979|Daughter of the Empire (The Empire Trilogy, #1)|Raymond E. Feist|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1672516954l/589979._SY75_.jpg|2960453], [b:Rise of a Merchant Prince|43917|Rise of a Merchant Prince (The Serpentwar Saga, #2)|Raymond E. Feist|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1360282060l/43917._SY75_.jpg|1844901], etc). I didn't have any problems with him, I just didn't find him all that interesting beyond what he did in Kelewan during his training as a Great One. He's a very consistent character without many interesting flaws or especially notable character traits, which is fair - people like that exist, I suppose, but they aren't that fun to read about, even if they do have all-powerful magician abilities. Feist is rather academic about his descriptions concerning the mechanics of magic, and while that works for some authors (Sanderson has made a career out of it), in Feist's case I mostly felt it just managed to make it less interesting as time went on.
Ultimately I'm very happy that I've read this series and I would recommend it to fans of adventure fantasy, but I wouldn't stress any importance on finishing the last 5 or so entries into it. Feist is to be commended for creating a compelling and interesting universe that undoubtedly influenced works that have come over - I just wish the ending didn't feel like just another iteration of the same framework I'd seen before.
I first read Magician: Apprentice maybe nearly 25 years ago as a kid and didn't continue the series past that until July 2021, when I decided to restart it. It's quite remarkable how much the series evolved over its 30 years. It began with, by today's standards (unfair, as it was undoubtedly very influential in forming those tropes), a pretty by-the-numbers Bildungsroman style story about an orphaned castle boy becoming the castle magician's apprentice. And if you reach the end, you'll have read metatextual descriptions of the base elements of matter (the manipulation of them being 'magic', which doesn't actually exist), investigations of how gods are created by people (not vice versa), entire worlds being destroyed, rifts between galaxies, time manipulation, and much more. Characters are born and die of old age, their children join the cast, and likewise exit the stage. It's quite a remarkable series.
Once the series was established, by and large, Feist concerned himself with two classes of characters (with some notable exceptions). The first is Pug, the titular Magician, and those like him - his family, and other members of Stardock and the Enclave of Shadows, which are mostly a collection of magicians who work to safeguard the world of Midkemia. The second are the non-magical nobles of the Kingdom of the Isles, largely members of the conDoin family from Crydee, where the first book begins. Without exception, I enjoyed the time spent with the second class of characters quite a bit more than the first. The stories featured interesting (if somewhat simplistic) political maneuvering with lots of swordplay, espionage, and other exciting elements. Characters like Arutha, Jimmy the Hand, Eric von Darkmoor, and Talwin Hawkins fall into this collection.
By contrast, I didn't have an especially strong affinity for Pug, the lynchpin of the entire series. My favorite books were those in which he didn't even appear ([b:Daughter of the Empire|589979|Daughter of the Empire (The Empire Trilogy, #1)|Raymond E. Feist|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1672516954l/589979._SY75_.jpg|2960453], [b:Rise of a Merchant Prince|43917|Rise of a Merchant Prince (The Serpentwar Saga, #2)|Raymond E. Feist|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1360282060l/43917._SY75_.jpg|1844901], etc). I didn't have any problems with him, I just didn't find him all that interesting beyond what he did in Kelewan during his training as a Great One. He's a very consistent character without many interesting flaws or especially notable character traits, which is fair - people like that exist, I suppose, but they aren't that fun to read about, even if they do have all-powerful magician abilities. Feist is rather academic about his descriptions concerning the mechanics of magic, and while that works for some authors (Sanderson has made a career out of it), in Feist's case I mostly felt it just managed to make it less interesting as time went on.
Ultimately I'm very happy that I've read this series and I would recommend it to fans of adventure fantasy, but I wouldn't stress any importance on finishing the last 5 or so entries into it. Feist is to be commended for creating a compelling and interesting universe that undoubtedly influenced works that have come over - I just wish the ending didn't feel like just another iteration of the same framework I'd seen before.
A fitting end to a saga spanning generations.
I am at a loss to describe the impact Pug and Midkemia has had on me over the years, both in the sense of an appreciation for the story and for the development of the writing, itself. I fell in love with the world and with its people long since, and was ever intrigued by the metaphysical and/or theological theory of this universe. In Magician's End, Feist blows the mind, gathers up the pieces and bundles them up in your arms, then quietly shows you the exit. I have never been so happy to be filled with heartfelt sorrow.
Yet, in the midst of the deepest darkness, there is always hope. Such I have been taught by the forces that move Midkemia into the bright yet unseen future.
I am at a loss to describe the impact Pug and Midkemia has had on me over the years, both in the sense of an appreciation for the story and for the development of the writing, itself. I fell in love with the world and with its people long since, and was ever intrigued by the metaphysical and/or theological theory of this universe. In Magician's End, Feist blows the mind, gathers up the pieces and bundles them up in your arms, then quietly shows you the exit. I have never been so happy to be filled with heartfelt sorrow.
Yet, in the midst of the deepest darkness, there is always hope. Such I have been taught by the forces that move Midkemia into the bright yet unseen future.
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A good ending to an epic series. All the different threads are twisted and turned into an ending it would be difficult to improve.