Review: The Darkest Road

The Darkest Road The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For most of this book, indeed for most of this series, I felt a big 2 star rating was at hand. A well thought out world and often beautiful writing caught my interest, but the meandering and frankly boring plot of it all took me out of the story and left me flat.

Then. And then...I got to about the 75% point of this third and final volume. It got...interesting. I mean, I found myself slowing down to absorb the words instead of skimming through rapidly towards the end. The end I wanted just to say I'd completed this work of a favorite author.

And these words were pretty good. But then...oh and then, about 85% into the book, Kay leveled his story at me and struck, right in the heart. Whoah, didn't see that coming...

I raced through the last few chapters, marveling at how all of the threads of this tapestry came around and wove together. Yes, this was the Kay I was looking for, the brilliance I had previously discovered in his other work and was missing to this point. Damn, he brought it all home.

A week ago I considered abandoning this book once and for all. You might say, I'm glad I stuck with it. I came around so much that I'm actually thinking a reread could very well be much more rewarding for that first 11/12 of the trilogy, knowing what I do about the final 12th.

But I'll wait a few years, I think...

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