Free Lord Of The Darkwood (Tale Of Shikanoko, #3) Produced By Lian Hearn Accessible As Mobi

is lost to the Darkwood, the powerful deer mask fused to his face after he defeated the Lord Abbott but lost the Autumn Princess, their child feared drowned in the lake.
While the false emperor sits on the throne, Heaven shows displeasure upon the land, But as the Minatogura Lord strives for eternal life, seemingly by slowly killing himself, Tadashii, a Tengu, sets a plan in motion to restore balance to the realm.


We are back on the Eight Islands for the conclusion of the Darkwood saga which began with Emperor of the Eight Islands, After they help him destroy the Lord Abbott but accidently kill the Autumn Princess, Shikanoko disowns the Spider Tribe he helped raise and disappears into the Darkwood with the burnt twins and steps back from civilisation, but the Eight Islands arent quite done with him yet.


His son Take, who he is unaware of, is trained by Mu and the Tengu Tadashii as the parts slowly move into position and the true emperor is found and eventually, against his will, restored to the throne.


The second part of Hearns Darkwood series is just as engaging as the first, and again as the chapters are focused around one of the main characters you can slowly feel the threads across both books slowly drawn together as characters are methodically moved into position or killed off before we reach the ending and the power of the Minatogura Lord is challenged.


I think Hearn does an excellent job in this second book, which maintains the pace of the first, and brings together everything neatly while still leaving the story open to continue.
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blog review sitelink here While still good, Lord of the Darkwood really felt like a middle book here, Unlike its predecessor, all the set up and development didnt really have any payoff in this entry, but it still put a lot in place for the final book in the series.
I really like how it pushed forward so far in time that we get to see a lot of the children characters grow up and establish themselves as major players in the overall narrative.
Its just too bad we didnt get to see them or the major players from previous entries do much,

Im really excited to see how this all ends, and I think this book is very important in developing the various story threads so they can all converge for the grand finale.
However, as its own book, it falls short of the previous entries, When I started The Tale of Shikanoko with Emperor of the Eight Islands I was under the impression that it would be a trilogy, for no other reason than fantasy series often are.
But then Lord of the Darkwood started coming to a head and the events which lead up to the Tales of the Otori slotted themselves into place and I had to reassess my preconceived notion: the story was going to end with this book.


What I absolutely love about prequels set some hundreds of years before are the tiny little details which though inconsequential to that particular book are hugely important in the preceding story they become like historical records to enrich the make believe world the author has created.
Rather than just accepting that world as 'because that is how it is' as a reader we have a much wider and deeper understanding, This is turn heightens my enjoyment of the main body of work,

As for Lord of the Darkwood itself, no love nor knowledge of the Otori is required, though the last two pages would be rather meaningless without it.
The story is intense, spaning over a decade of time in which the characters grow and change as the environment around them crumbles the very essence of the world unhinged with it's faux rulers and hidden, evil powers.


Similarly to Hearn's other books, chapters differ in their narrator giving us the perspective of each of the main characters, This method keeps the story fresh, allowing character's whose current story is stationary to be skipped over, Consequently readers are privy to the insights and intentions of both the pro and antagonists and left unsure as to where the story is headed,

My one and only gripe is the names, One of my own biggest flaws is pronunciation, even in my head, even worse when place and character names are similar, and I struggle to sound unfamiliar words

out.
Coupled with the quirk of family names and their relation to the city the person is from I found myself frequently flipping back to refer to the map and character list.


The list was invaluable, For a series which I started last year it was useful to reaquaint myself with the cast, Additionally, the whole scope of the story leans heavily on politics and that comprises of two things: people and places, I am not usually one for novels with such focus on domains and their rulers, but what I do love, interesting characters, makes this element secondary, The cast is huge but each is balanced and evolved, As much as I loved Hearn's previous work Lord of the Darkwood demonstrates her improvement the story fleshier and writing amplified,

I initially gave this four but then I felt bad cos I just loved it so much, I will definitely be revisiting the Otori, it is one of the few series which I read as a teen, read in mys and will reread again in mys.
Still frustrating, but worth the commitment,
There are NINETY characters listed at the front, and several of them have more than one name,

If you buy this book, I suggest getting two copies, and tearing the list of characters out of one of them so you can leave it at hand.


In this slim volume, the characters added to the stage in the previous book are developed, and it's very clear that when everyone's lined up we can move on to the Big Wrapup in book.


Several key players want to kill other key players, some are unsure whether that's what they want, and others are protecting key players but are under stress themselves.


Meanwhile we meet yet another old man who smiles, knows all, sees all, And we finally meet a tengu, who seems at times to come from our own modern world where he's the "dungeon master" of a complex game,

I'm thinking there's gonna be a heap of smiting in the next one, Not Red Wedding smiting, more likely one at a time in a series of showdowns, But who's with whom, and how will it happen And who's got the lute and don't tell me it was stolen by luters and yes, I know what a lutenist is.

This book was much slower paced with a whole lot of nothing going on, That said, it set up the final book quite well, I'm hoping the last book has some action or something going on in it because otherwise I'll be very disappointed with the ending of this series,

It was interesting that this book hardly featured Shikanoko, He was in less than a third of the whole book, He's frequently mentioned by characters but makes few appearances, The spider children are key characters in this book and the majority of the plot seems to revolve around them and Hina each doing their own separate things.


I'm bittersweet about this book, Sweet because it was just as well written as the other ones, Bitter because there's only one more left in the series, I've come to love and care about the characters in this world and will hate having to say goodbye next book, Thankfully I can always reread if I want to visit with them again,

I'll give the same recommendation most people seem to with this series: Start with Bookand don't leave too much gap between reading sessions, If a person starts reading with any book besidesfirst, they'll be totally lost, Also each book picks up right after the other ends and there's no background given in the beginnings of the book, So unless blessed with an excellent memory, it's easy to forget events if to much time passes between each book,



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