Joseph's Reviews > Crown of Stars

And here we are, at the end of all things. I guess this will have to stand as a review of the entire series (because it is absolutely not something that you'd read piecemeal -- if you're at this point, I assume you've read the previous six books as well and really, this is a single, continuous narrative), although I have no idea how to begin summing up a series of 5,200+ pages spread across seven books other than to say: I liked it, and am glad I read the whole thing.

Yes, there's a lot going on in these books -- you have the central kingdoms (Wendar and Varre) riven by civil war and succession crises, you have multiple not-entirely-human forces invading from the fringes, you have religious schisms and heresies, magic, griffons, cataclysm and while none of the factions involved are irredeemably evil, there are at least a couple of genuinely really bad people maneuvering things from the shadows. Or from right out in the open.

And the most amazing thing is: It all worked! There were a lot of threads to juggle, but Kate Elliott did keep everything straight and tied everything off at the end and yes, it took me something like three months to read the entire series, but in the end it was entirely worth it, and I look forward to exploring more of her (happily much more reasonably sized) series in the future.