The Cerulean Storm

In my opinion, the final book slightly redeems what has been a downward-sliding series. The end is satisfying and well done, but the journey to get there was not.

First, as with the previous books, the characters are still pretty shallow. The final book sees the protagonists engaged in encounter after encounter, and fight after fight; very little chance of development. The exception being the really awkwardly-done and shallow love relationships between Rikus, Sadira, Neeva, and Caelum. Would've really benefitted from some dialogue or internal reflection on their motivations and perseverance... after all, these people are going after a group of the most powerful beings on the planet... with a child in tow!

The second problem was the power level. Our protagonists seem to have “levelled up” to be on par with the sorcerer-kings in the span of 5 books. While the author tried to make it partially luck-based, it was really off-putting to see the Dragon and the sorcerer-kings facing off the protagonists and coming out the losers. It was just extremely silly to have Rikus and Neeva and Caelum struggle against mere giants in the earlier part of the book, yet standing up against poweful undead spirits and sorcerer-kings and the Dragon. And where a single sorcerer-queen decimated an army and almost killed Sadira, yet later on FIVE of them couldn't kill even one of the “heroes”. And I'm still baffled as to how the author could have forgotten about the Balican fleet and army that was supposed to be escorting the sorcerer-kings...

On the plus side, the flavourful bits about Athas' history was nicely done, as before, but strangely, there was absolutely no reaction from the protagonists regarding entering the city of Ur Draxa... but maybe not so surprising, considering it's the same as their absolute lack of reaction when they entered a lush forest for the first time in book 1. Other than that, the plot twists weren't quite that cliched, so that was refreshing, especially that bit about Rkard. The final fight to stop the titular “cerulean storm” was actually quite well done and believable, a lot better than the Dragon battle, although... no, I'll stop ranting; too many little bits of unlikely things to bother complaining about.

The summary is that, yes, it's definitely better than the middle books, and yes, it's a decent end to a somewhat poorly-executed series. Just don't expect much of it.