Unholy

After a year of waiting, finally finished this magnificent trilogy!!! Mr. Byers you are truly a genius, when writing any villains viewpoint!!!

Thay -an empire ruled by wizards called the Red Wizards....ummmm yeah, they really call themselves that, anyways for a lot years, they were the antagonists of a lot of people/organizations/country/empire.........you get the idea, you would think those going up against them would fear these Red Wizards, unfortunately as I've said they were relegated to the lowest rung of villainy, evil yes but comedic evil, where a bunch of so so goody two shoes could vanquish them without batting eyelash........sighhhhhhh poor poor Red Wizards!!!

Now here comes Mr. Richard Lee Byers, wherein once these guys, were described as wizards mumbling spells, he added a lot, you read about their debauchness(is there such a word), the evil that goes on in an empire run by necromancers, people sold to slavers to be either experimented upon or as food to the various denizens of the night/demons or devils........

One of the prominent figures in Thay is Szass Tam, the zulkir of necromancy, under Mr. Byers nurturing hand this second rate villain has been reborn, where once he was just described as a shadowy figure, here his might was seen and tested!!!!!

To appreciate the story, please do look for it.........and I'm betting you will also fall under the grasp of the Master...........oh ummmmm......Mr. Byers.......

A very satisfactory ending to a trilogy that didn't start off so well for me. Book 3 begins about a century after the events of book 2... a century?! Yes, apparently, this is the start of 4th Edition D&D. I was initially starting to doubt my enjoyment of this book but it slowly unfolds with perfectly valid reasons for the timeline.

The main thing I found really good was character development. You would expect characters that started off in book 1 would be more or less fully developed already, but this book puts our protagonists of Aoth, Bareris, and Mirror through new challenges and new self-realisations. While I started off not quite liking them, at the end, I was turned around. And not just on them - plenty of development and focus on the zulkirs, Malark, Szass Tam, and even Aoth's lieutenants.

I loved the solid pacing of this book - it's never a slow pace - it just builds up towards the finale conflicts. And speaking of that, the finale was superbly done - switching between different view points and two separate conflicts smoothly. If I have to complain, I suppose the battle scenes towards the end was getting a bit too unrealistic, just by logically thinking about the number of casualties there must've been. But it doesn't detract from the action at all.

A great ending to a devious plot, and a great beginning to 4th Edition (for me anyway).