A Crusade of Epic Proportions
© Evelyn Keys
Following, albeit slowly, on the heals of the Axis Trilogy, Crusader has been released; the compelling finale to The WayFarer Redemption. There has been three years between book one and book three, but this has in no way damaged the effect of this saga.
I'll admit it straight up; I'm a big Sara Douglass fan. I've spent many nights (often 'til dawn) devouring her books. The conclusion of the Axis Trilogy didn't impress me overly. The ending saw Faraday betrayed by her lover, Axis, for another woman, and left dying. After that I couldn't read anything about Axis or the new lover with any sympathy whatsoever. That is one of the few complaints I had with The Wayfarer Redemption, Douglass treats Axis with too much kindness for my liking. In spite of that major gripe, I could not put the books down.
Sinner is a powerful beginning to The Wayfarer Redemption. The ground has shifted beneath the readers' feet, and suddenly the bad guys are no longer bad. It's most certainly up to standard, and its read-ability explains why it received the 1996 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel.
Despite the destruction of the evil Gorgrael, and the restoration of peace, all is not well in Tencendor. Many threads were left untied, not the least of which is the unhappy situation of Drago - Axis' son who was stripped of his Icarii heritage as a child. There is a murder in the castle and the finger is pointed at Drago, who finds himself compelled to enter the stargate. Douglass has focused on how cracks in the peace of Tencendor have appeared as a direct result of the Icarri's pre-eminence.
More! More! More! What began with Sinner, is reaching a climax in Pilgrim. It's addictive, I was up for nights in a row working my way through to the last pages. The one flaw seems to be a lack of depth to some of the characters. I would have liked to understand them a little more, why they are doing what they are doing, and how they feel about their situations. The depth would have been more gratifying and it would have made for more identification with the characters. Despite that, the characters held my attention, even if they didn't evoke the greatest responses.
