Reviews and Comments

I'm reading this after almost a decade, and it was still quite fun, after having explored so much more of the cosmere. Hoid barely has a cameo in this one, and the heist went well. One of the rare times I didn't have to use Fictionary for checking up on old characters, since everyone is a first-time character.

I was watching out for mentions of shards, and Ruin but not a lot of that. I really liked the pacing of the book - it lets you breathe at just the right places, and Vin's growth shows very nicely.

One complaint I have with the novel is missing women characters. The entirety of Vin's old and new crews is male. The only other women we meet are unnamed skaa in a prologue, and a few noblewomen - one of which is dead by the end, with barely a few words. It does pass the Bechdel test on a technicality, but not really.

There's always another secret.

I’ve spent the last year or so slowly going through the series, starting from Liveship Traders (I’d read the first trilogy 6 years ago).

This is such a lovely ending to such a well written series. Fitz gets a great farewell, and I was sobbing for the last 10% of the book saying goodbye to him and his memories. It’s the best kind of closing book you can ask for.

There’s a point in the Rain Wild trilogy (the weakest books, I suggest skipping them) where Rapskal goes and drowns in memory stones, it’s called “Memory Diving”, where he starts to live in the memories of the elderlings instead of his friends around him. I felt that as an allegory for readers, sampling books and living lives through characters. (His diving ends up coming of use, as memories of long dead elderlings, show them the way). And I felt that keenly here, towards the end - the books are as much about memories and dreams as they are about dragons.

Every time you read a book with lively characters, they live in within you. In the case of the Fool and Fitz, these are characters that you’ve seen go through a lifetime together. Through misery, death, joy, subterfuge, grandeur, and the amazing journey we call life.

By the end, with Nighteyes and the Fool joining Fitz in his wolf, it felt like I was the wolf they carved, and they will live through me.❤️

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Beyond the ending, the rest of book is great, and I loved the closing arcs of various characters from the Liveship trilogy. Amazing to see Vivacia take flight, Paragon become Dragons, Althea, Ronica, and Malta yet again.

It’s very hard to write a book that deals with foresight. And with the Fool’s prescience the books have always had an element of that. However, this and the last book use so much of Bee’s journals as epigraphs, that you want to go and reread them as events are unfolding. It’s quite a tough job to show foresight, and hint at events, but not show them to the reader outright.

It’s very well done.