The book's (and trilogy's) greatest strength is also an important weakness: the intricacy of the plot. Different characters bear different names in different scenes, making it all a little tricky to keep track of (not to mention the relatively minor characters you're likely to forget about if you haven't seen them for 400 pages). The shifting of the timeline is also liable to scramble a reader's brain. At the same time, this complexity allows for great originality, some fun plot twists and late revelations, and sensitive character development. I do particularly like the sustained questions about which side is ultimately "right" or "wrong," and how this is difficult for any one character to know (or to accept) given his/her beliefs and past history. There's a combination of tragedy and victory that appeals strongly to me.
I think the trilogy as a whole will bear up well under rereading, which I consider a significant achievement.
The Light of All That Falls is the spectacular conclusion to James Islington's Licanius trilogy - a modern fantasy blockbuster packed with magic, prophecy and adventure.
James Islington's bestselling debut, The Shadow of What Was Lost, began an epic tale of three heroes who embraced forbidden powers to confront a rising evil. The adventure continued in An Echo of Things to Come as armies clashed and magic collided. Now the final battle - and the fate of the world - is at hand in The Light of All That Falls, the enthralling final volume in the Licanius trilogy.
This is one of those books I haven't read since high school and am in a better position to appreciate now, particularly as I've been thinking a lot for my own purposes about the nature of trauma and how battlefield (and similar) experiences can affect different kinds of people. The way the protagonist and others change over the course of the story says less about them as individuals, I think, than it does about inherent human fears and drives that can be triggered equally easily, given the right circumstances.
Here is Stephen Crane's masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage, together with four of his most famous short stories. Outstanding in their portrayal of violent emotion and quiet tension, these texts led the way for great American writers such as Ernest Hemingway.
On the whole, I found the world-building and plot construction to be careful and very clever; if you've read some Plato or any of a number of philosophers, you'll have plenty of "aha!" moments. To an extent, that actually frustrated me: why bother creating a parallel universe if you're going to populate it with figures and events from our world (but with different names)? It turns out that there is a reason for that, and you just don't find out until about 800 pages in. Maybe a more sensitive or attentive reader would have anticipated that reason sooner than I did.
The core cast of characters is small, distinctive, and likeable, and the writing flows easily even when the subject is something like quantum mechanics. The plot expands far beyond what you might be expecting at the outset; perhaps for that reason, I found the ending abrupt and disappointing. The problems that the characters were facing seem suddenly to evaporate, and I was left wondering if I missed something.
Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians. There, he and his cohorts are sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable "saecular" world, an endless landscape of casinos and megastores that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, dark ages and renaissances, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides it is only these cloistered scholars who have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his friends, mentors, and teachers are summoned forthโฆ
Caleb Tholstan wakes up in the forest one afternoon with a dead man's blood dripping on him, a headache, and no memory of what happened. He is soon caught up in a war between his home country and an invasive, migrating nation of raiders, but even amid these fast-moving developments, he is continually tormented by dreams that tickle at the edges of that lost memory. He must find out why that day in the woods is so troubling to him - before the nightmares unhinge him altogether.