This final volume in the Daughter of Storms trilogy differs from the other two in that the action is not triggered off by Shar's enemies, as they are now all dead or, in the case of the Sixth Plane, forced to retreat back to their place of origin. Instead, Shar becomes embroiled in a project at the wizards' castle to revive a disused method of instant travel involving a patch of grass outside the castle gate - the Maze - by means of an amulet.

As a junior initiate, Shar isn't officially involved but her sense of entitlement means that she soon starts secretly trying to master it herself, by getting the minor elementals she can control to "borrow" the amulet each night. Her powers mean that her experiments are far more successful than the official experiments, and she is able to teleport to distant places, but she soon realises that the amulet doesn't just take her through space, but also time. She then starts to try and control the times and places she can go back to, with the aim of killing her uncle before he can murder her parents. Unfortunately, this has repercussions with time being messed up and phantoms of the past being brought into the present, and ultimately her meddling might wreck all time and space.

As usual, Shar never thinks of others, not even her friends, but her self absorption and arrogance tip over into megalomania in this volume. When her experiment to travel without the amulet's aid fails, her reaction is telling: "It wasn't fair. She was a Daughter of Storms, she was a Dark Caller, she was special. The Maze should have worked for her, and the fact that it had not felt like a personal insult." She is an overgrown toddler - a spoilt brat as the musician Reyni called her in volume 2 - and it is baffling why her friends put up with her and like her. In this volume, she became so completely without redeeming features that, for me, she switched to being the villain that other people were trying to stop, and I was amazed by the ending when she is let off lightly and the High Initiate says she might in future be the best High Initiate ever. In my opinion, she didn't learn anything from her salutary lesson at the end, as she didn't show remorse for the destruction she was inflicting on everyone else; only when she herself was affected did she suddenly become sorry. So for that reason, I have to rate this at 1-star as I found her character so unlikeable. ( )

With her unique powers, Shar is driven to unlock the secrets of The Maze -- a magical gateway through time.

A light, interesting read. ( )