Steles of the Sky

I had to slog through this installment. It felt like all our characters were on the road most of the time. And the showdown with the big baddie loomed for a long time.
Extra points awarded however, for Yanchen's royal yak, Lord Shuffle.
I anticipated that Ms. Bear would clever her way out of a long battle sequence at the end. I had been waiting for the rukh's liberation for 2 1/2 books. A long bloody war was well sidestepped. And yet I was sorry our characters were stuck in this fairly standard regime change plot. One more complaint: too many times telling me about jostling the airag bags outside the steppe yurts!

Things got a little bit convoluted for me--probably less her fault and more mine. I've got a low tolerance for complex fantasy epics with a half dozen narrators. Also, I like my characters a little bit more complex, a little bit less perfect, and pretty much everyone was good and perfect and they all got along, for the most part. Bad guys were bad and good guys were good and not much in between. And there is an Epic Battle, which seems pretty standard for fantasy post-Tolkien, but which also seems somewhat cliche. I don't know.

Anyway, I do recommend this fantasy trilogy if you're into Chosen One stuff but are also sick of fantasy epics centering white men and Fantasyland Europe. And if you hate the way that One Man With A Million show more Ladies Wanting To Bone Him usually goes (*ahem*, Robert Jordan!). And if you want some female characters that work together and are even friends instead of catty rivals. show less

This series was amazing, and the conclusion put it over the top. People say we need diversity in genre and it's rarely delivered. It's delivered here and it's the best "epic fantasy" I've read in decades. I took some time over this book because I was afraid I would be sad to see it go, and I am. I fear that I will never read something so poignant and original again. Well played Elizabeth, well played.

Buy and read this book, it's the strongest recommendation I can make. You will thank me for it.

Steles of the Sky is the final book in the epic fantasy series the Eternal Sky, which starts with Range of Ghosts. Temur is raising his banner as Great Khan and gathering allies against the plot to raise an ancient evil.

Thankfully, the synopsis for Steles of the Sky differed from the formula set out by the last two books. On the other hand, I don’t think my problems with the last book were just mid series slump. I think this entire trilogy suffers from poor plotting and pacing.

While the end of the book did bring everyone together for the expected Final Battle, the beginning of the book maintained the pattern of people traveling from point A to point B that I’d complained about with the previous books. The plot feels very standard show more and completely unoriginal, and the only villain to be at all interesting is Saadat. There’s many elements I liked about the trilogy, but with such a weak plot line and poor pacing, it really suffered.

Yet there are many elements I enjoyed. The foremost is the sheer beauty of the Eternal Skies. Bear has imbued her setting with grandeur, awe, and wonder all brought to life by her magnificent prose. I love how she takes her inspiration from Asian cultures instead of European and how the magic fits so deeply into the landscape, with the skies that change with the fate of empires.

The other high point of the series is the inclusion of multiple important women, of many different sorts. I know both Hrahima, the tigeress warrior, and Samarkar, a wizard of the Citadel, will stick with me for a long time. The trilogy overall had a number of mother queens ruling as regents, and I wonder if it’s either inspired by history or has some deeper thematic meaning. I’d probably need to reread to say more on the subject, but what I noticed this first time around was interesting.

I didn’t find the ending completely satisfying, as it seemed like there were a lot of unresolved plot threads (what was up with that Lady Dio subplot for instance?). I was more emotional about it than I expected, which led me to realize just how much I’d gotten attached to some of the characters.

Other than its Central Asian setting, the Eternal Skies trilogy is very much a traditional, non-grimdark epic fantasy story. It’s not a trilogy I would reread or strongly recommend, but if nothing else I don’t regret reading it because of the beautiful world building and prominent female characters.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page. show less

Review for all 3 books in the trilogy.

This trilogy was wonderful. Complex characters, interesting plot, amazing world-building, smart writing, nuanced socio-political observations.

There's a large set of characters, but they're introduced slowly enough, and are distinctive enough, that I had little trouble sorting them out. There were characters you could love to hate, characters you pitied, characters you reluctantly liked. The world-building had enough similarities to Earth to pique the interest, but enough differences to sustain the interest. And the plots all resolved in a way that was true to the story, even though sad in some ways.

Highly recommended.

Glad I stuck with this series. The characters got more compelling and the more cliche elements of the plot fell away as the series progressed.

Reviewing the final book of a series is always a strange affair. There’s the need to not repeat too much from the previous reviews, and the need to avoid spoiling anything for those who still haven’t read the earlier books. Plus the review should be interesting for both those who have and those who haven’t read what came before.

I’m taking the easy way out, and opt for a rather short write-up. Should you decide to just skim this review, no problemo, but please, don’t miss the quote near the end.

Steles Of The Sky is the sequel to Shattered Pillars – one of the best books I read in 2015 – and the last book of the Eternal Sky trilogy. Together they form one long story that needs to be read in order. It is set on something show more “resembling the steppes, deserts and mountain ranges of Eurasia after the death of Genghis Khan” I wrote in the review of Range Of Ghosts, but that needs a caveat: Steles features a riffle, and that adds a bit of 19th century flavor. This one riffle doesn’t appear out of place at all, and that fact that it’s even in the book shows Bear’s restraint, and her willingness to take a chance. In the hands of a lesser writer, the riffle would have turned entire chapters of the book into something steampunkish, out of the desperate need to explicitely blend genres.

Please read the full review on Weighing A Pig show less