Why you can trust GamesRadar+
Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.
Author: Juliet E McKenna
Publisher: Orbit
599 pages · £8.99
Article continues below
ISBN: 1-84149-377-5
Rating: 3/5
Three sequels and three points of the compass down, sceptical warlord Chazen Kheda is finally heading home. The Aldabreshin Compass series has done a decent job of sitting between epic and small scale fantasy over the last few years, mixing plenty of politics with its heroes’ ever-increasing sideline of freelance dragon slaying.
This concluding part is no different, although it does suffer from last book fatigue. Whether it’s the illegal status of mages, the team’s relationship, the structure of the courts that the characters visit, or the dragons tearing things apart, we’ve seen all this before. At times, it feels like not a paragraph goes by without a call-back to an older adventure; a reference to a time when the group wouldn’t happily put out to sea to take on a dragon.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
As they finally set about the return voyage, it’s hard to shake the feeling they’re re-treading old ground and ticking off the political subplots, debt by debt and slight by slight, rather than building to an epic conclusion. Certainly, there’s little point leaping into the action without having read the earlier books. But such continuation also extends to the rich depth with which the world is described,. This is also the volume where the characters have to start thinking about what happens when they do get home, from the risks of being skinned alive for consorting with mages, to how it affects their relationship.
Such things provide closure to the series, though with little but passing interest if you haven’t been following the dragon-slaying odyssey up to this point.
SFX Magazine is the world's number one sci-fi, fantasy, and horror magazine published by Future PLC. Established in 1995, SFX Magazine prides itself on writing for its fans, welcoming geeks, collectors, and aficionados into its readership for over 25 years. Covering films, TV shows, books, comics, games, merch, and more, SFX Magazine is published every month. If you love it, chances are we do too and you'll find it in SFX.
