Product Description

The allied factions of humanity, along with the waning Ildiran Empire and the powerful water elementals and sentient trees, have defeated the near-invincible alien race of the hydrogues, driving them back into the depths of gas-giant planets. But before peace can heal the wounds between the races, two ancient enemies return: the capricious fiery elementals, the faeros, who mean to burn all those who fought alongside their mortal enemies. And the lost hive race of the Klikiss, who intend to reclaim all the worlds they inhabited 10,000 years earlier, worlds that are now home to many human colonies. Meanwhile, the leader of the Terran Hanseatic League, Chairman Basil Wenceslas, intends to pull all of humanity's unruly stepchildren into his iron grip - even if it means he has to hold the Ildiran Mage-Imperator hostage, risking renewed war with an entire alien civilization. THE ASHES OF WORLDS brings to a thrilling conclusion the myriad storylines of galactic warfare and personal betrayals, starlost romances and titanic alien conflicts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1847 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 752 pages

Customer Reviews

There's some silly stuff in here
While it's an interesting tale, the final volume is just a bit of a let down. Everything, and I mean everything, gets tidily resolved. There are some silly bits in here too. You have people on the planet looking at shells being fired by space ships. You have the pilot of a space ship able to spot people on the planet. And then there's the scale of the worlds where these things live. You might think a gas giant planet would support more creatures than the earth as it is so much bigger, and the sun would support even more creatures as it is so much bigger than the gas giant planet - but this does not figure in the story at all.

And then there's the human chairman who seems able to run the entire Earth federation single handed with only the aid of a deputy. The person in charge of the Earth Defense Force is off commanding a space fleet. Really? Who's running the military while he's away then? You have to suspend your belief in the real world quite a bit with this tale. It's interesting but not a masterpiece.

Best book of the series
This book is a brilliant conclusion to a fantastic epic.
It took me only two days to gobble down this book, and i enjoyed every second of it.

a nice conclusion to the series.

A solid if unspectacular end to the series
So, everything is wrapped up nicely in the Spiral Arm. But perhaps a little too nicely.
The dialogue is still clunkingly awful in places, with characters spouting terribly earnest, even pompous lines. The action and invention that compensated for this in previous novels is still there, but it feels diminished, the enemies vanquished a little too easily in the end.
I guess an inevitable consequence of having so many characters is that there will be those that are interesting (Basil, Syrix, Davlin) and those who feel pointless or only half drawn (Celli, Cain, most of the Ildirans), and a final volume inevitably has to dwell on everyone, diluting my interest somewhat.