Worldbinder

Unfortunately, easily the weakest of the series so far, by far. I suppose not bad as a story in and of itself, but as a continuation of the Runelords series, it feels like Runelords only in the barest sense. It feels like he had nowhere else to go in the main story with the magic, and with escalating evil, and so had to come up with this. First, the Reavers were the greatest evil ever faced and had to be stopped. Then Shadoath was even worse and needed to be stopped by an even more powerful being. Now even she's not the worst, and Fallion has to become even more powerful to stop this latest threat. It seems like an ever-escalating threat that only stops when the author decides to end the series. That's the exact reason I stopped watching Walking Dead. Now, I'll continue the series, as there are, as of now, only two more books, but it's definitely with less enthusiasm, and if this was like a 15 book series, ala Wheel of Time, I might stop.

The other problem besides the trope of each villain “worst villain ever TM” being worse than the last, this feels like a totally new series. I got that with the turnover with Son of the Oak and accepted that. This feels like he intentionally changed the world. If I wanted to read an entirely different series, I would have picked that series up. And yet, it's not. I now have to keep track of “shadow personalities”, and where this guy is a king here he was a peasant in the first world. Meanwhile, Raj Aten was a monster in the first series and all-powerful, here he survived and is a good man? Kinda makes me go um, trying to connect all these personalities with their counterparts. I didn't like when they blew up the Star Trek universe and I don't like when they do it here. And then the Runelord powers and blood metal that were the signature of the series, literally it's name, is almost absent here. Yeah, towards the end they're learning it in the new combined world, but it still seems like he wants to make a whole new series.

Overall, an unfortunately weak entry. Hopefully the next entry is better.