Let me talk about magic systems. Its hard to compliment a magic system in a novel, because it is so often used to handwave away cliches, bad prose, or M/Gary Sues. While you don't have to explicitly detail every single in and out of a system, the general rules and limitations need to be outlined for the reader. A system with rules allows you to be consistent and clever. A system without rules is an asshole you can pull anything out of. I'll come back to this in a moment.

Redeeming the Lost is a hot mess of a book. Lanen remains mostly a spectator in her own story. Akhor continues to oscillate between extreme emotions, sometimes within the same paragraph or sentence. There's a lot of repetition from previous books as well as within this one - we are subjugated to the "I'm finally with with love of my life but I can't fly so my life is ruined" angsty argument on at least 3 more occasions, with no real resolution.

A lot of plot threads/ideas are introduced and either solved immediately or forgotten. Practically every healer in the land is taken over with a demon and told to sow chaos - murdering, stealing, etc. Think about what it would be like if every hospital was suddenly filled with Jasons and Freddys. Yeah. What we're shown are about 2 healers that say some mean things that get people upset briefly. Humans are suspicious of dragons...for about the length of a conversation. There's no public proof of Lanen's parentage, but when she stands to inherit all her father's riches, her mother and a servant woman have a single conversation off screen and it is unquestionably resolved.

The Aiala/Lesser Kindred have been awakened, and they can all unambiguously see the future. They mention this future sight once and it is never mentioned or used again. They do not join any of the major battles, and only Salera has any lines. They are treated as a separate subspecies of dragon with a separate culture, meaning they also don't help the dying Katri breed we met in the first book. Salera's biggest contribution to the plot was to ask another character to share their feelings in the most awkward way possible, then exit stage right. As much as I like dragons, the Aiala could have been cut with no real loss to the plot, and would significantly tighten up the book. Everything they did could have been done by the other two dragon groups.

Then we have the Aral/Vilkas/Will storyline. Will does nothing in the book except pine over Aral. Aral does a bit more, but the majority of time is spent pining over Vil. Vilkas wallows in self-admonishment. Its just angst all the way down. Again, we get a lot of repetitive conversations about the love triangle. The actual resolution at the end is grossly unsatisfying. Vilkas goes Dark Phoenix on the demon race, who are actively invading the world. This is fine until defending the world turns into 'commit genocide.' Aral gets him to stop by telling him she loves him and that genocide is bad. The love triangle is resolved by Aral immediately latching on to Will after Vilkas rejects her, despite both her and Will knowing she is settling/not really into him. I hate everything about this. Aral's entire personality is based on obsessing over men. Will's entire personality is to hover around a woman who he knows is not interested in him, creepily sniffing her hair and waiting for her to realize she should be with him - he is a Nice Guy. Will could be cut entirely from the book as well with no loss. Let's force Aral to let go of Vilkas and learn to be her own person instead. If the above cuts were made and the repetition removed, this would easily be a duology, with book one being Kolmar -> Dragon Isle, and book two being Dragon Isle -> Kolmar.

Let's get back to magic systems and the ending. The rules for healing are never really clarified. The rules for demon magic aren't really specified. None of them are. The whole ending is a series of deus ex machinas and random events. The Demonlord keeps saying how he's not really a demon...but this is never expanded on. Why did that matter? We never learn the limits of what can and cannot be done with healing powers, so when Vilkas and Berys face off, they are doing things we've never seen in previous books. Lanen stops Berys at one point using the 'voice of the lady,' which is never explained other than "yeah this totally happens but we've never discussed it until now, and no one knows what it means," and it never happens again. Akhor is transformed into a giant dragon again, and then later gets the ability to shapeshift at will but there is no explanation given for either event, other than "It must be the gods/winds!" Even then, the religions aren't even expanded upon. All we know about them is the name of the gods.

Ultimately, the ending ties up all the loose ends, but does so in a really unsatisfying way. ( )

TBR

Quick Review: I found the mechanics of telling the story more unusual than the plot in this tale of dragons and humans

(Much) Longer Notes here: http://terriko.dreamwidth.org/53259.html ( )

For some reason, I liked Redeeming the Lost a lot more than the first two. There was a lot more action in this one, and I got into it more. The ending was brilliant. I would have been so mad if it hadn't ended the way it did, but it ended perfect. Three of my sisters have read this series and they all love it. I can't share their enthusiasm. The first two books just didn't catch my attention, then I read this book, and I perked up; in my opinion it was the best of the three, but still, not amazing ( )

I really liked the first book in this series but this one really wasn't impressive, it's as if she ran out of steam with the series and just kept writing in order to finish the series and answer a deadline. The continuous swapping of perspectives didn't help the story and maybe it would have been better if the author just took a third person perspective throughout the story.

Laren Kanelar has to help fight the demon-master Berys with Varien and save their world and the dragons. A fair bit of angst and some characters having to face up to their power and the responsibility it brings. A disappointing climax but it does finish a good story. ( )