Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The adventure part of the book is good. Karigan is held captive with other riders and displays the leadership qualities that made her Chief Rider by keeping the group calm and coming up with escape plans. And eventually escaping a bit more by luck than by plan, but that's alright. The Second Empire brings the battle to Sacor City, while Estora gives birth to the royal heirs, then pulls together the military and even goes out to meet the opponents for peace talks. Also, other stuff happens in the background. The problem, in this book and really the last 3 books (this, Firebrand, and the short story collection) seems to be a special new version of the idiot ball. For those not familiar, a character is passed the idiot ball when the plot requires someone smart to otherwise do something obviously dumb. Then the author makes the character do the dumb thing rather than revising the plot or coming up with a character reason for the character to do the dumb thing. In the Green Rider series, it seems to be more of a b*tch ball, where characters who we're told are good, caring people and who previously acted as good, caring people, suddenly decide to treat the protagonist like garbage all the while proclaiming to be her friend in order to make the plot progress. In this case, the stand out example has to be Estora dragging Karigan to the peace talks because the plot requires that Karigan be there when things go bad, but the author previously established that Karigan is recovering from grievous wounds, is sleep deprived to begin with, and is in a mystic healing sleep. But no, let's drag her out of her sick bed because she's Estora's friend and Estora needs moral support ... while also needing Karigan to recover in order to use her sword fighting, magic, and messenger skills which are way more important and also, who drags their seriously injured friend around when they need medical care? If you're doing that, you're not actually a friend. Meanwhile, Mara ALSO drags the seriously injured and mystically sleepy Karigan out of bed so that she can escort Fergal to go talk to the queen. Because ... Fergal is suddenly scared of the queen he saved and spent months with, just the two of them in book 3. And Mara as the senior rider of the group and supposed leader can't do it without Karigan for ... no reason. This is again, not the actions of a friend, nor is it tactically smart. Of course, this may all just be because the author is having to seriously walk back things she's said in the past. For example, Rider Mender Ben can no longer give people a new hip. And thus cannot give Karigan a new back. Despite this being a plot point of book 4. And while there is such a thing as an unreliable narrator, we shouldn't spend 4-1/2 books and approximately a decade of time in the real world to find out that this detail is not correct. Then we have a character whose ability is revealed to be floating. Which is fine. Except for the part where then Karigan and others go on to say how overpowered she would be if she could actually fly. You know, the character whose ability to step between layers of reality allows her to 1) go invisible, 2) make other people invisible, 3) step into different layers of reality like the Blanding and Eletia, 4) control the dead, 5) be an avatar of the death god. But one other rider being able to control both the horizontal as well as the vertical of her movement just for herself would be overpowered and require her to have the powers of a great mage. Uh-huh. The author was better off just saying she could float and leaving it at that. Then we have Zachary and Karigan. Karigan made it clear in book 2, before Zachary had even made firm marriage plans that she would not be the royal mistress. She wants a family and an openly loving and supportive relationship. Zachary, meanwhile, chose to contract a marriage as part of his royal duties, and while he did not consent to the marriage at the time, he chose to give his consent (and honor the contract that he had made) by accepting it after the fact. I, as some other reviewers have also mentioned, hoped that Karigan would move on and thought that Cade was a step in the right direction. But now we're apparently back to the beginning after Firebrand, and here Estora gives her permission for Karigan to take up with her husband. Despite the fact that Estora had previously hoped to win his love in books 4 and 6. Despite the fact that the whispering wraith scenes in this book restate that Karigan's idea of love is a devoted husband and kids, something she can't have with Zachary while Estora lives. Perhaps divorce is an option, but if that is the way Zachary wants to go, he really should have done it a few years back when Estora and his counselors forced him into non-consensual sex, not a year later when she's the mother of his children. Also, at this point, I'd rather not see Zachary and Karigan together because it means they just used Estora as a convenient womb to get heirs out of, since Karigan can't get pregnant while having adventures. But I'm waiting to see how much of what Karigan wants gets walked back even in the same book that it was rephrased in, just to force the two together, because she certainly needs to get laid. Finally, Karigan is given a judgment saying that she will face suffering beyond what she's faced before in the future. Which ... She's suffering from PTSD from being tortured, lost her mother as a child, cannot be with the man she loves but has to see him regularly with his wife and adorable children, lost the use of an eye, is recovering her ability to hold heavy items due to what happened to her back ... I'm not sure there's much left for her to suffer through. Causing the downfall of Sacoridia, maybe? Except if it falls, it was going to fall anyway, so that doesn't really work. The death of more of her friends and family? So many of them have died that it doesn't really suit. A religious trial/war (as the book seems to be opening that up as a possibility)? I don't really see that as worse than what was already happening. I don't really think anything can live up to the promises made. Nor do I necessarily want it to. Karigan has suffered enough on a large scale. She doesn't need more. It's things like this, the characterizations falling apart, that nag at me and make the book far less enjoyable than the early adventure romps. I loved books 2 & 3. 4 was fine and while it complicated the romance, it was a perfectly fine book. And I love time travel, so 5 is also a favorite of mine. But 6, the novella, and now this 7th one had me going back through the author's notes to see if she'd changed agents or editors or beta readers or come into contact with someone who was having a bad influence on her writing (so far as I can tell, the answer is no). Anyway, if you also thought the writing quality dropped with Firebrand, this is more of the same. Go back and reread 2&3. You'll have more fun. If you want to finish up the Second Empire plotline, it seems to end here. And there is more going on in the background (though I didn't find any of it good). I will tentatively say that I'll still be interested in the next book to see what comes next. But if it's more of the same, then it may be the last.