The end of the trilogy and the end of a wonderful fantasy. I loved all the main protagonists and hated the antagonists. Glenna was energetic and down to earth, Blair uber-cool and straightforward, Moira (love the name) bookish and certainly not mousy. Hoyt I found a bit of a boring (al work no play) but nice guy, Larkin was fun and lovable, Cian was dreamy hot and a paradox to the whole vampire world Nora Roberts set. This is not written in a style where I would read every single word of it, but more sort of a style where gloss over parts that sound to ... (not sure how to explain). Except from that and the fact that the end battle keeps being waited and waited some more for, while the actual end battle is somewhat an anti-climax, it was a lovely read. I especially loved how it ended, even though I suspected it long beforehand. ( )

I loved this trilogy. Cian was by far my favorite and although I thought the love story between him and Moira could have been developed a little more I still loved the book. ( )

This is the last of the Circle trilogy that started with Morrigan's Cross and continued with Dance of the Gods. The consensus seemed to be that this would be the best of the series and everyone seemed to be waiting for Cian's story.

So when I wasn't thrilled, I wanted to know why--what other people saw in this book that I didn't, and vice versa--and I read a bunch of reviews to try to figure it out. The positive ones drooled over Cian; the negative ones complained that there were *gasp* vampires. I don't know why I bothered.

It did make me think more about my reactions, though, which was, after all, the purpose.

First, the good stuff. I liked the interactions between the group of 6, and basically the characters in general. The four stars is primarily for the characters, including the bad guys. The vampire leader Lilith, her 2nd in command Lora, her "son" Davey, and their wizard ally Midir were nicely creepy, believable, and 3-dimensional. They were vain and selfish, but cared about each other. I didn't agree with the reviews that said they weren't evil enough. Evil with human characteristics is so much more interesting than just pure evil.

Also, Cian and Moira were in a pretty impossible situation--always a good plot for a romance. He's an immortal vampire, content with his life in 21st-century earth. She's a mortal, queen of her people, in Geall, an alternate world that's mostly like medieval earth.

I appreciated Moira's growth once she became queen, and how she proved herself to her people, stood up for them, and motivated them.

But I think this trilogy dragged on too long for me. The war that was supposed to provide the bulk of the conflict in this book didn't. I didn't really care about any of the people involved in the earlier skirmishes; and the outcome, and even the course of the big battle at the end were predictable and thus lacked tension.

There was very little tension in the romance plot, either. Cian and Moira initially tried to deny their feelings for each other, but Moira decided to seize what happiness she could, and didn't have much trouble convincing Cian. Any complaints about their relationship from the other 4 or from Moira's subjects were dismissed easily.

And oddly, despite the fact that in Morrigan's Cross, Cian was a fascinating character, he had very little to do in this book. It's primarily Moira's book, about her becoming queen, her personal growth, her battle to save her people, and her tragedy of loving someone she couldn't have a happily-ever-after with. Cian was just a secondary character here.

As for the ending... I know plenty of people like paranormal stories that end like this, but it feels like a cop-out to me. In fact, I think I'd have liked this book better--or at least felt it was more honest--without the happy ending. Don't get me wrong--I do not at all advocate pushing the envelope of romance genre conventions by eschewing the happy ending--with an other-than-happy ending, I'd have called it something other than romance. ( )

This was by far the most interesting and best developed book of the trilogy. Lots of great images. ( )

http://olvasonaplo.freeblog.hu/archiv... ( )