Unlike many of his other books, this fourth and last volume in The Serpent War Saga goes on for quite a while before taking off. My best memories of Feist's books are of stories that get you hooked from the very first page, but this one builds up slowly and only around page 100 you begin to feel drawn in. The plot is a bit formulaic: evil has not been totally rooted out in the last installment in the series, a massively evil power threatens the world, a great war ensues and the cavalry gets called to save everyone.
It's a nice epilogue to The Serpentwar Saga in that it wraps up a few threads, however, a really stunning novel it is not. It failed to capture my attention, for most of it. I didn't come to care much for the new characters, who are mostly either poorly developed or old personalities rehashed. Even returning characters seemed to have gotten less interesting. Only the last two hundred pages got somewhat exciting, and even then it was just a lot of frenzy that didn't elicit too many emotions.
It was great to visit with old friends I had made in previous Midkemia novels, such as Pug, Tomas and Nakor, but this time I got the feeling that they should better be retired. This is a very long series if you count all Riftwar, Serpentwar, and the other books in between, and I'm getting the feeling that some characters have grown to an almost godlike status that can always tip the balance in favour of the good guys. Maybe the time has come for me to give up on Midkemia, at least for a while. It looks like Feist leaves ample room for more sequels and unless they start dealing with a lot more magic than long winded descriptions of military campaigns, I'll have to say "so long and thanks for all the fish".
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