The Fall of the Dagger

Well that's an interesting end to the series, scope to return to the world (which was satisfyingly complex for me) and I enjoyed how people had different motivations and purposes and things were not simple for the chosen ones.

Oh man, that was a series that caught me and kept me interested. Magic and evil and a complex society that wasn't predictable, all good, my kind of read.

The evil has to be conquered and the survivors have to work out what to do with their lives and with the aftermath. Interesting work.

The Fall of the Dagger by Glenda Larke is the final book in the Forsaken Lands trilogy. I have previously read and reviewed the first two books, The Lascar's Dagger and The Dagger's Path. I should warn you, the very blurb for The Fall of the Dagger contains spoilers for the earlier two books, as will my review.

I have always enjoyed Glenda Larke's work and The Forsaken Lands trilogy has been no exception. I definitely see myself rereading it at some point, especially since I expect the trilogy will be even more enjoyable if read in quick succession, rather than with a year-long gap in between books.

Nevertheless, picking up The Fall of the Dagger a year after the previous instalment was not difficult to get back into. The three main show more characters, Saker, Sorrel and Ardhi, return to the Va-cherished hemisphere with some idea of how to defeat the evil sorcery that has taken over the land. Saving the world, however, is never easy and the three of them can't do it alone.

I quite liked that it actually took a lot of people working together to win the day, and not just the chosen three, so to speak. Also, I enjoyed the post-climax action. Usually, the world is saved and that's the end of it, but Larke bothered to show that it's not quite that clean and easy to resolve everything when the bad stuff has been building up for several years. And I think that's as much as I can say without spoilers, really.

I really enjoyed this series and highly recommend it to all fans of BFF (big fat fantasy) books, especially anyone looking for worlds beyond the standard medieval Europe setting. This is also not the kind of series where you can pick up the later books without having read the earlier books, so I definitely recommend starting with the multi-award-winning The Lascar's Dagger if you are new to this series. If you've already read the earlier books, why wouldn't you pick up this one? Go on— don't you want to see how it all ends?

4.5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. show less

Great trilogy. It kept strong right to the end. Strong theme of teamwork and trust to overcome evil.