The Dragon Revenant

It's hard to overstate how disappointing this book was. Long. Dull. Uninspired. Anticlimactic. A pale, passionless shadow of the way the series started out.

I'm glad all the loose ends got tied up and the story all sorted itself out, but boy was it a slog to get here. Unlike the others, this book takes place in a single time period, which makes it even more obvious that Kerr has given up on the one truly original and interesting aspect of Daggerspell – the reincarnation and Wyrd.

Minus the interesting echoes of past lives, we're down to your basic fantasy novel, and a mediocre one at that. The plot is repetitious and meandering, the characters are kind of dumb, the bad guys are a complete joke, and 300+ pages of tension and plotting lead up to a complete non-event of a final showdown.

For others who have read the first three and want to read this one just to see how it all pans out: Rhodry is un-exiled and appointed the heir, but has meantime gotten himself kidnapped and sold into slavery in Bardek. Jill and Salamander go chasing after him, eventually finding him and disposing of the bad guys, who turn out to be incompetent cowards who can't match Nevyn's power. They take Rhodry back to Deverry, where Jill predictably realizes she wants/needs to study dweomer more than she wants to be trapped into the courtly life of a queen. After some agonizing, she leaves Rhodry and goes off to become Nevyn's apprentice. This decision made, she almost immediately remembers all the details of her former life, and tells Nevyn she (Brangwen) forgives him. There, now I've spared you the hours of your life you would've wasted on this book.