And so it ends. Again.
After the events of The Dark Talent, Alcatraz isn’t doing so well1, the Talents are still gone, several Smedrys are dead23, and the world is about to end.
So of course we have one last adventure. Chock full of impossible situations, anti-gravity sharks, a Gak, so many straw puns4, and an army of kittens5, romance6, and a big battle on top of a giant glass spire in the middle of the ocean!
One thing that was kind of odd to me (having read almost all of Brandon Sanderson’s works at this point) is how the fine details of the magic system never quite came together–and now they probably never will. The talents are a lot of fun, magic glass is neat78, and somehow they are related… but how does it all work? Is Alcatraz right? Where did it come from?! I know it’s not a Cosmere novel, so it gets a bit of a bye for that, but I wanted more. So it goes.
In any case, compared to The Dark Talent, it’s actually an ending, which I greatly appreciate. Other than that, I feel like it’s a weaker entry into the series. Still a lot of fun to read and I’m glad to have finally gotten to them.
Onward!9
Okay, so at the beginning of the book, it makes sense that Alcatraz wouldn’t want to write this book. Except… by the end, he seems to be doing just fine. So if the books were written in real time, sure, but the books are written well into the that future. Bit weird that. ↩︎
Well, except we got a note from Bastille about one of them at the end of the last book. ↩︎
And another isn't actually dead... ish? Is it living to be permanently stuck in a lens? Why did he need to have survived and why didn't they deal with this? ↩︎ ↩︎
Alcatraz as a ‘strawman’… doesn’t really make any sense. ↩︎
Did… they explain this one? I thought they were going for a ‘herding cats’ kind of thing, but they were just terrifying and left at that. But–I’ve met kittens? ↩︎
It’s been vaguely building for a couple of books, but a bit weird. They’re 13. And I’m reading it to my children. Could have been worse I suppose. ↩︎
I especially wanted to know more about how exactly Alcatraz was super powering glass and where that might have gone… ↩︎
Also, how can someone get stuck in a lens? The Curators of Alexandria (in Scrivener's Bones) sort of hinted at this I suppose, but it feels a bit like a copout3. ↩︎
Why yes. I did enjoy enfootnotifying this one. 😄 ↩︎