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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9137915" data-attributes="member: 8461">Just now noticed that this had updated; I swear, it's a shame that this thread always seems to get scrolled off the front page so fast.As it is, I agree that this one ended with a whimper more than a bang, which feels disappointing since the deaths of multiple deities and at least one epic-level character should have much more impact than this. As it is, I'm not sure how much I can keep blaming that on my being aware of the edition change that this was justifying; there were other things happening here which soured my enjoyment.Halisstra's ending was one. I spent a really long time wanting to like her, but in the end her indecisiveness toward which god she served became irritating, feeling more like a source of frustration than a tragic character flaw. I like the idea of characters who damn themselves by their own actions, but that's usually when they insist on following a course of action that's clearly self-destructive, insisting that it's the rest of the world that's wrong, not them. Halisstra's inability to commit to a deity came across as wishy-washy, and that wasn't something I could invest in for a character who was supposed to be a protagonist.Likewise, the appearance of Qilue was a bit underwhelming. She's always been the most enigmatic of the Seven Sisters, and I had the distinct impression that she was making a guest appearance here, more of a cameo than taking a real role. Normally, I'd be analyzing how well her character here synced up with her other appearances, but she has so few other appearances I mostly just wanted this to help define her, and it didn't feel like that happened. I couldn't get a handle on what sort of person she was; I seem to recall a scene where she was irritated when one of her sisters showed up, for instance, as though she didn't like them, and I didn't know why (beyond some vaguely-implied religious tension, i.e. someone devoted to Mystra shouldn't be showing up at Eilistraee's temple). It just came across as unfulfilling.Similarly, I didn't understand the entire thing with Wendonai and how there was a distinct ethnicity of elves who became drow because of his influence, unlike most of the rest of the drow. It became this weird (sub)plot which was treated as being a major point that characters focused on, and the emphasis it received felt disproportionate. Like, Lolth is knocking off drow deities left and right, wanting to be the only one...and the big plan is "wait, these elves became drow due to Wendonai's curse; if we undo it, they'll all be saved...and us too!" It's like if Bane was going to blow up all of Gotham City with a nuke, and Batman decides that he can save one busload of people. I get that the protagonists here aren't the good guys, but a lot of their planning seems oddly fixated on achieving a lesser solution, rather than a greater one.Overall, I feel like this series needed more room to breathe than it had. Maybe [USER=16069]@Goonalan[/USER] is right about Lisa Smedman having a hidden message about writing under corporate constraints. The previous series was six books long, and dealt with the fallout of one god disappearing (i.e. was feared/hoped dead); this one was three books long, and saw multiple deities bite the dust. It just didn't have the pages to do what it wanted to do, and the execution suffered for it.</blockquote>

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