emsemce123 's review for:

The Light of All That Falls by James Islington

3.5

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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Now that it's all over I feel like this was too much. James Islington was gonna write whatever he wanted to write and I feel like he did too much. Even he himself admits cutting out and writing a stand-alone book on 2 characters from this series (Aelric and Dezia) I wasn't hooked from the previous entries and found it a chore to read more often than not. This book might be my least favorite of the trilogy, it feels like as much as there is going on, James didn't really have a plan on how he wanted to end it, or if he did know how he wanted it to end he didn't know how to get there. Asha is gonna be in a tributary to power the il-shara or boundary, a device capable of sucking peoples essence for centuries while keeping them in a kind of dreamlike stasis, but no, she's there for less than a year or maybe a little more (I forget how much time has passed at the start of this book, a couple weeks iirc?) It could be worse, when she went in at the end of the last book I thought, oh, he's fridging her without frdiging her, we won't see Asha again til she's needed...or something. But to his credit he kept her around and relevant. Davian is already stranded and held prisoner in another land behind the boundary after the ending of the last book, it's fine, but no, we have to have him stranded and held prisoner within another land out of time, while still being held prisoner in another land behind the boundary. Caeden is just wandering around trying to find himself...still. It all felt very played out at this point and I lost interest and struggled to keep going, just wondering, why are we doing all this again? Also Islington could really work on character deaths

Erran, Fessi, Scyner, Ishelle, I feel like I'm forgetting more but all dead either off-screen or just mentioned in a single sentence, "oh, that person, they're dead now. Wtf!?!?"

I did love the reveal of the prophecy at the end with Caeden/Davian and where Davian came from. I don't know if I'd ever reread this, but if I ever did I'm taking notes cause this is too much.