by The WandererAuthor: Brent Weeks
Publisher: Orbit
Genre: Sword and Sorcery, Epic Fantasy
Series: Night Angel Book Three
Pages: 699
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Spoilers for the previous two books in the Night Angel Trilogy are below).
In The Way of Shadows Brent Weeks told an entertaining story – I would equate it to being a summer blockbuster, but in book form. It had its flaws, but it was entertainment first, literary merits second. It’s sequel Shadow’s Edge struggled greatly, especially with Kylar’s time outside of Cenaria and by introducing a number of secondary characters that added almost nothing to the story. Bringing back Durzo Blint at the end was criminal, but the resolution of a few of the plot points like Vi’s ringing of Kylar made things interesting enough to warrant reading the final installment of the trilogy.
Beyond the Shadows goes completely off the rails. The first two thirds of this novel are amongst some of the worst fantasy I’ve read – especially in regards to the secondary characters and the romantic pairings. The final third starts to pull things together – at least from an entertainment perspective – but it ends by force feeding some imagery to the reader in a feeble attempt to shove some ideas about love and redemption that had been casually thrown around the series.
