An Echo of Things to Come

I am going to be honest here, I was not as impressed with the second book of The Licanius Trilogy. Do not get me wrong, it was good, but it just seemed that this book started to meander a little too much. Or maybe Islington was channeling a little too much Robert Jordan, whereas he just keeps introducing more and more characters & ideas.

One of the problems (and this could be my fault) is that the first book came out in 2015 (at least that is when the Audible version was released-I think the published version came out later) and by the time I listened to the sequel, I forgot so much that happened in the first one. Maybe I should have listened to the first one again before starting this one. I will probably do that a month or two before the third one comes out, listen to both books as a refresher.

So here are a few things that will be a bit spoilery…

-Why does it always feel like in these types of books that the big monsters that come from a distant land are super dangerous, except to the protagonists? Wirr is able to defeat a bunch of the things that came through the Boundary, but everyone else is ripped to shreds by them. Always seems a little weird (I realize this is normal in all stories).

-So let me get this straight: the Venerate (you know, those immortals, who are arguing if they are fighting for the good god or bad god), are actually from the other side of the Boundary, so it was Tal’kamar (who was one of them, but now thinks they are fighting for the wrong side) who created the Boundary to keep them out. And yet for some reason they can keep getting through the Boundary (until they die and are reborn?). And at the end, Davian kills one of the Venerate and saves Caeden, right? Unfortunately they are still trapped on the other side. And seriously, it was so confusing as to what the whole thing was with the Lyth. I seriously hope there is a wikipedia page explaining this soon.

I will stick with this series because there were some very good parts and some of the mystery is quite intriguing. I wish he would either focus more on the strife between Gifted and regular people (almost seems like X-Men territory) or focus more on the history of Tal. Or maybe this series needs to be bigger than three books. Maybe Islington can expand this universe a bit after finishing the third novel.

Author: Ngewo