The Destiny of the Sword

The ending was not at all what I expected, but it was set up beautifully, as the Age of Legends transitions to history. There are puzzles revealed, magic understood, some "back stage at the Invasion of Normandy" sort of stuff, more swashbuckling, less black and white decisions with more gray consequences. Stuff happens, individuals become epic heroes or not, the world changes irrevocably. A new twist on the Merlin - Arthur archetype, without this being at all about Arthurian characters.

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Title: The Destiny of the Sword
Series: The Seventh Sword #3
Author: Dave Duncan
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 370
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Wally unites the swordsmen, captures a top wizard and realizes that The World needs both of them. So he hammers out a peace deal between them. In the process though his protege Nnanji rockets up through the ranks and by the end of the book is a Seventh Level Swordsman himself.

Nnanji is show more charismatic, is willing to kill, can delegate, has a brother who can scheme like nobody else, a wife that is ambitious and an unshakeable belief in Wally. So of course, he is on the road to becoming the first Emperor of The World.

And Wally gets all butthurt and starts whining about democracy and slinging terms like psychopath and fascist and dictator. Thankfully the little god has a talk with him and Wally accepts that he'll have to play second fiddle to Nnanji from now on.

My Thoughts:

This was a decent story right up until Wally starts whining about Nnanji supplanting him. He was all 21st century ideals in the first book but had gotten over that in the second and in this book. Up until that point. Then it was a one chapter tsunami of weak willed bs.

It ruined everything up to that point for me.

The story is wrapped up satisfactorily thankfully. This was originally a trilogy and then years later he wrote a 4th book, The Death of Nnanji. I will not be reading that.

★★☆☆ ½ show less

There's not as much action as some like with their adventure, but there's a great ending and a dash of what it means to live out faith.

Along the same lines as the previous books in the saga, this was good but not great. However, the ending made up for some of its failures, in that it surprised me and was a well thought out ending for the series - not what I would have chosen, but a fitting ending nonetheless. This book saw a lot more come into play from the main character's "past", which I thought made the story more interesting as well. As far as the ending, the twist is well planned and thought out, and I appreciated its uniqueness. It was however (in my opinion) abrupt, and not enough time was given to build up to it. Still, all things considered I enjoyed this book the most in the series.

I liked the end well enough, but there were quite a few parts of this one that annoyed the hell out of me. Lots of sloppy logic and plenty of ways I could have imagined the story ending that were different from the ways it did end.

Still, it was a fun read, and definitely kept me up at night. Essentially read it in two days and two nights.