I finished this book before Christmas, but I’ve been ruminating on it since then. I know that this is the last book in the Last King of Osten Ard series, and I believe it’s the grand conclusion to our adventures in Osten Ard as whole. We started with Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, and then continued with the Last King of Osten Ard, intermixed with a couple side novels (The Heart of What Was Lost and Into the Narrowdark). So we have quite the compilation of stories with Simon, Miriamele, Jiriki, Aditu, Isgrimnur, and all of our favorite characters. So, as with the end of any era, it’s bittersweet.

This is a spoiler free review.

It took me a while to read. I started on November 13, 2024, the day it came out, and didn’t finish until December 22, 2024. It’s not that I wasn’t interested or invested in the story, it’s that Tad Williams packs a lot into his stories. He uses a lot of words, and the language is very rich. For me, this makes me read slower, because the content is not meant to be devoured quickly. Some people can do that, but for me, I needed to take my time.

The first few chapters are clearly set up and moving people to get them where they need to be for the climax of the story. It was nice to see those pieces coming together and it didn’t feel too rushed. Once we get everyone where they need to be, that’s where things got a little wonky for me. We have the big battle with the Norns vs (almost) everybody else, and it ends. Great. But then we still have about a third of the book to go, and we still have another antagonist to battle. Taking them one at a time makes sense, but in doing that, there were characters that were just missing for basically the whole middle of the book. We had some characters fighting only one of the antagonists, and then our main protagonists were fighting both antagonists. And then you had the actual navigator’s children plot to wrap up after all that. It was a lot going on and it was handled in a pretty methodical way. My feelings are all over the place about this, so it’s hard to say it was good or bad. It was just different and unexpected.

I don’t like to give too many spoilers, but there is a character that reappears and its kinda anti-climatic. The reveal seemed to come out of nowhere and honestly I almost missed it. It should have been more powerful and dramatic than it was. It just happened. This could be reader error on my part, but, that just means I’ll need to do a re-read! Anyway, the ending was left a bit open. The story continues for these characters, but we still have questions left that we may never get the answers to. For example, we may or may not have seen the Last King of Osten Ard…what we get is more of a “here’s the plan and so you may have seen the last king, but maybe not”. It’s an interesting way to end a sprawling and epic series like this one, and it definitely left me wanting to know more. But the characters continue to live their lives. We only get a piece of their story. Maybe one day we’ll get a little more.

This has been a very rambling review, but I’m not sure if I will ever have concise and coherent thoughts about it. I enjoyed it, and I think that if you love the world of Osten Ard, then I would definitely recommend this series. I would also recommend that you reread it. I think rereading will help answer some questions and probably pose some new ones as well.

Lilypad Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5