Product Description

The world of Liath and Alain is breaking apart as King Henry's kingdom is savaged by earthly and supernatural forces, which they alone have the power to understand. The Eika warriors thirst for the King's land and power, their enmity sealed by generations of blood. Bitter in-fighting within King Henry's court and the ceaseless attrition of raiders also weaken his reign. Those who remain true must stay strong as the shadow of the Cursed Ones falls, and the spell holding the exiled from the planet fails. Liath must force her wild sorcery to maturity and Sanglant, her husband and King Henry's heir, must struggle to hold the realm together. The twin destinies of Liath and Alain may yet avert the destruction written in the stars.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53337 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 832 pages

Review
'A gripping and enthralling fantasy epic' THE TIMES 'A grand and powerful piece of writing' Katharine Kerr

About the Author
Kate Elliott lives in Pennsylvania, USA. In addition to the Crown of Stars series, she is co-author of THE GOLDEN KEY.

Customer Reviews

Another page-turner volume!
This 6th Volume follows on directly from the 5th. The story storms straight into the plots and threads of the previous book with great pace and surprises. The whole book still provides unpredictable choices made by leading characters and unexpected events that shape the whole story in a way that sets up the final volume brilliantly....a real cliffhanger that all fans of this series will enjoy.

Without giving too much away, there are interesting developments after the return of the Ashioi in the aftermath of the great spell worked at the end of the last book; Sanglant as heir to his father's kingdom tries to fill his father's shoes, and in turn that provides a new slant on his relationship with Liath. We find out what happened to Alain and his story in particular is intriguing and not completely certain to the reader yet.

There are some fascinating movements by Queen Adelheid and Antonia emerges again and becomes Skopos, joining forces with Adelheid....and they acquire some VERY surprising prisoners!
Not so surprising is the fact that Hugh has survived, but he again proves to be unpredictable. Plus there are chapters showing the state of play of characters such as Ivar and Baldwin, Stronghand, Sapientia, Theophanu and Blessing, et al.

The book is as fast paced and full of plots and sub plots as the other 5 books in the series. Fans will thoroughly enjoy this book. To other readers, I highly recommend reading the other 5 books first to get acquainted with the book's mythology and characters. FIVE STARS!

Reasonble continuation of the story, but still only half a novel.
In the Ruins picks up the storyline from the end of Book 5, The Gathering Storm. The long-foretold cataclysm has come to pass and the continent of Novaria has been devastated by the return of the Ashioi. However, whilst the Ashioi argue amongst themselves about what attitude to take towards humanity, the kingdoms of Wendar and Varre once again fall into bitter infighting whilst their old rivals in the east, particularly the Arethousans, advance their own plans.

In the Ruins (***) is actually the first half of one novel, chopped in half when it got too large to publish in one volume. As a result it is the least self-contained of the seven books in the series, lacking any kind of climax or resolution. Despite this, the established storylines tick along nicely and we start seeing how some of the less-prominent storylines that the series has followed are starting to come together quite nicely for the conclusion.

My review for the whole series
I think that there was a good story underlying this series, but I can't say that I enjoyed reading it. Call me a Philistine but I think books should be a pleasure to read - not just a challenge. For a seven book series to be a pleasure and not a challenge, the author needs to make it easy to read. And that's where old Katie falls down.

First, there was the arcane Shakesperian dialogue. At first this was a neat touch. By the end it was looking like a howling blunder. What it did was it made the book a struggle to read. Contrast this with (say) David Gemmell, Geroge Martin or (outside fantasy) Paul Auster. They're authors whose work glides down like honey. I can get through pages and pages of their work without getting tired. without finding my mind drifting onto other things.

Second, I don't have a brain the size of a planet. My paranoia is where the Marvin resemblance ends. With a series as big as this, I expect to have a cast list at the back of every volume (not just volume 6!) and I expect a recap at the start of volumes 2-7. Even if I'm reading the novels in succession, because of the way my mind's drifting, it's comforting just to have the author confirm to you that you took in the whole story and didn't miss something important.

Third, with multiple story lines, it's good to make it more clear to the reader who we're talking about. George Marin had the great idea of having the name of the viewpoint character in big letters at the start of each chapter and it would have been great if Kate could have copied this. That's a WIBNI - "wouldn't it be nice if". Not a big issue. What I found unforgivable was when the first couple of pages of a chapter didn't mention the names of the people involved. He did this, she did that, etc. I found myself having to look ahead to find who we were talking about before I could read any further.

As for individual books,
Volume 1 was quite good - 4 stars
Volume 2 was still OK - 3 stars
Volumes 3 and 4 really dragged - 2 stars
Volume 5 actually had things happening in it - 3 stars
Volume 6 was back to normal - 2 stars
Volume 7 had to have things happening really but was dull - 3 stars