Love Jennifer Fallon, hated this series. ( )

Reunion by Jennifer Fallon is the third book in the Rift Runners trilogy. You can read my review of the second book, The Dark Divide, but unfortunately I read the first book, The Undivided, before I started blogging. This review, by the way, contains only minor spoilers for the earlier books.

Jennifer Fallon has long been one of my favourite authors, a fact that I was strongly reminded of as I read Reunion. There is a certain amount of snarky wit to her writing that I didn't realise I had missed until I came back to it. A small example:

...in prison, as in great literature, it is much more effective to show than tell.

Clearly, I should read Jennifer Fallon books more often; they used to be on my re-read rotation, before I moved to a different continent to most of my books and also became a book-blogger.

Whereas The Dark Divide picked up quite soon after The Undivided left of, Reunion starts after a three year gap. That and the real-world eighteen month gap since I read the previous book left me slightly disoriented at first, but I quickly remembered who everyone was and why, and was soon able to get on with enjoying the book.

The main thrust of the story in Reunion deals with Ren and friends trying to stop the Matrachaí from killing all the magical creatures in all the parallel dimensions and worse. Of course, as soon as they think they know how to fix everything, something else goes horribly wrong. It's hard to get more specific about the plot without spoilers, unfortunately.

One of the things I've always thought Fallon did quite well is write complexly motivated characters. Not only that, but the way she weaves their story lines together to form an intricate web is masterful. At every turn each character does the thing that absolutely seems most right to them in the situation but that has ramifications they could not have predicted. Generally rather entertaining ones.

The ending of Reunion was satisfying but left some threads open to follow on in a potential subsequent series (but not a cliff-hanger, fear not). I hope there will be more books at some point, but I don't mind waiting (especially since the next Fallon series coming is a sequel to the Demonchild Trilogy and Hythrun Chronicles).

In short, Reunion was an excellent read, as has been the entire Rift Runners series. It's not the kind of series you can read out of order, so if you haven't read the other books, I strongly suggest starting with The Undivided. To readers who have enjoyed the earlier books, this is a no brainer. Readers new to Fallon's work will find this series a less epic fantasy introduction to her works, since it's set partly in our world.

5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. ( )