Dragons of a Vanished Moon: 3 (War of Souls Trilogy)

The book opens moments *before* the last left off, seen this time through the eyes of Palin in the Tower of High Sorcery, but doesn't linger there long before moving off to other territories, exploring what happens with Mirror and Skie, how the Qualinesti cope with their losses, and Mina's inexorable march on Sanction. Successes and failures carry the feeling of being influenced by the unopposed will of the One God, and the heroes of the story always seem to be fighting a losing battle against hopeless odds. Which is, of course, the stuff of heroic fantasy.

Unfortunately, the scope of the tale requires more than a trilogy. The story simply seems to lack focus, and jumps about between Palin, the Qualinesti, the Silvanesti, Mina, Silvanoshei, the Great Dragons, Sir Gerard, and so on without lingering on any one of them long enough for the reader to really _care_ about any of them. Crises of faith that could be explored in depth are solved almost immediately after having arisen, monumental battles dissolve in a single chapter, and the feelings of the characters involved seem like a distant concern. Instead of feeling their emotion at their triumphs and failures, the reader is left feeling like nothing more than an observer passively wondering how the heroes will get out of this one rather than fearing for them.

This aside, there's no escaping the grandeur of the tale being being told. Weis' and Hickmans' style remains fluid and graceful, and they've certainly lost none of their flair for bringing on the shocks. The final chapters of the book are absolutely amazing, bringing the story to a neat, complete end but leaving much to be explored later.

All in all, this is an excellent, well written piece of work, but with a breadth of material that should have covered a trilogy of its own.


Poor climax to otherwise good series   July 11, 2002
 1 out of 5 found this review helpful

I read this book in the hope that it would be as good as all of the previous books in the series. The new adventures of Taz and Gerard were entertaining and well written in the previous volumes of the series, as the interaction between the main characters was as good as we expect from Weis & Hickman.

This book is still as well written as the others for the majority, but towards the end it starts to loose the thread and the finale made me go "WHAT JUST HAPPENED???" it was so odd that I had to read the last 50 pages again just to sort what all of the main characters were doing.

Overall I was disappointed at the ending of what was otherwise a good series


Wonderous End to a historic saga   June 27, 2002
 8 out of 12 found this review helpful

I've waited long and hard for this book, and was it worth the wait... yes. The intricate story of Mina and the One God could not have ended on a better note. If I had sat for months at a time I could not have wrote a better finale. Weis and hickman are not the litery genius like Tolkien, Tad Williams and Jordan but the way they can draw you into their books remains unbeaten to this day. The unkillable Kender Tasselhoff burrfoot is at his best and the tales of compasion, love and the search for something to believe in had me on the edge of my seat for hours.

So if your thinking should I buy this book I would say without a doubt YES... by the whole trilogy, they take the work they started back in the early 80's and finish it in style.

I hope they continue...