The Third Scour

The Cycle of the Scour #4

by Edward W. Robertson

The young sorcerer Cally has routed the Mallish invaders from Collen, the home of his love Myla. For the first time in a long time, the land is at peace.

But few believe it will last. Brought before Collen's highest authority, the Pastkeepers, Cally is told a deep the Rod of the Devil's Tongue, the artifact he used to defeat the Mallish, has even greater powers than he knows. If he can unlock them, he can drive the Mallish out of Collen forever.

Under the Pastkeepers' watch, Cally and Myla travel to Ilonia, the city of canyons and canals. There, they learn that if they want to unleash the rod's full strength, they will have to tame the soul of the devil trapped inside it.

But the Three Tamings are a dangerous task. Filled with dark mysteries and grotesque monsters, the ordeals threaten to drive Cally mad. As his mind frays, Mallon stirs. If Cally can't take the devil's power for himself, Collen will fall.

A tale of war and love among two young sorcerers, THE THIRD SCOUR is the boisterous finale to The Cycle of the Scour series.

Genres: Fantasy

434 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 4, 2025

About the author

Ed is the author of the post-apocalyptic Breakers series and the epic fantasy series The Cycle of Arawn. A former New Yorker and Idaho-guy, he currently lives in the LA area. His short fiction has appeared in a whole bunch of magazines and anthologies.

Reviews

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Just to warn, I read this book as audiobook, so some of my spellings might be a little silly.)

This book, like the previous two, is in first person perspective, which is obviously not a flaw but I do have very strong preference for third person narration and I will still complain that it was a bit of a switch up after The Cycle of Arawn + The Cycle of Galand + The Sealed Citadel. But I do think it was worth continuing the Cycle of the Scour to the end, fortunately. In terms of what was good about perspective is that the narrative voice of Cally all throughout the Cycle of the Scour was genuinely different compared to Dante in his own series (or even, say, Raxa). That’s often hard to accomplish, as multiple POVs whether in one book or throughout a series can sometimes blend together in a way that makes the characters “feel” kind of the same, but in my opinion you can really tell that Cally is experiencing the world as Cally versus when we were in Dante’s perspective.

This book had a lot of the elements I love most about the series as a whole, the main one being questing in strange lands. I’m glad we got to see more of that. It wasn’t better than any of my favorite subplots or most beloved strange locations from previous books, but that’s just a matter of taste really. The adventures necessary for the “Taming” portion of the story were still fun and engaging all the way through. The narrative here also accomplished something that I find extremely satisfying but rarely see it pulled off successfully: where I have a suspicion of how things are going to pan out, and that it’s way different than the characters expect, but there’s also enough evidence in the story to make me second guess myself and see the perspective of the characters as also logical. So I think I know what’s gonna happen but I’m not sure about it, which makes me want to read on to find out. And then I feel smug about being right after all, but I wasn’t bored getting to that answer. Usually, in other works, this kind of set-up is just a frustratingly predictable attempt at a plot twist everyone sees a mile away except the characters themselves. In this case, I was like “oh there’s absolutely no way that this Taming thing is anything other than the devil tricking you to get free” but then the characters accomplish what they do on the Isle of Gent and I’m just like… now I don’t know what to think, because surely it’s FIGHTING the devil to free the innocent people trapped there by something so awful… except that surely breaking wards is only ever done to RELEASE devils…

There are extremely few characters in this entire series that I wouldn’t be hyped for more screentime from, even if the character was very minor or a villain I was happy to see killed. I think the list up until the Cycle of the Scour was literally just Nolost (I don’t dislike him as an antagonist but he’s not that interesting), and Samarand + Laramore from The White Tree (sorry teenage Dante, they were not even a little compelling to me). However I’d also add Inspector Vara to this category because I simply do not care to hear about her at all. It was weird to have a villain I wasn’t excited to get more interaction with, and when Cally finally got his revenge I was just glad she was dealt with. So, kind of disappointing background villain.

Cally and Myla’s relationship was cute but “young love” is simply not a topic I care about, particularly in the abstract. I WAS intrigued to see more questing adventures by a couple other than Minn and Blays, since it’s usually friends and assorted allies rather than lovers participating in the plot, but I gotta say that if we are comparing romances I’m simply much more invested in Minn and Blays. The implication is that the loss of this relationship basically forged Cally into who he became as an adult, which just seems… excessive, for a late teens/early twenties relationship of like a year (two years?). But again, maybe I just don’t understand “young love” lmao. It’s also kind of weird what an extremely different version of events in the other books we get from the much older Cally and the Keeper from Dante’s POV, I do imagine they’d want to keep it private and wouldn’t necessarily lay out the full truth so technically it’s not a continuity problem or anything because they were presumably just lying (especially the Keeper, Cally just blamed dysentery which I guess could have been a major problem off-screen), but like… I expected what happened in this book to be a LITTLE more in line with that version of events.

And I’m still disappointed we didn’t get more questing with Rowe. I liked Tover a lot in this book, he was a great adventure friend, but he’s not Rowe, who Cally really EARNED the friendship of. We see a lot of characters who are thrown together with the POV protagonists by circumstance over the course of the three Cycles (arawn/galand/scour) and bond by pursuing their shared goals, which I do love reading very much, but this was a variation on that pattern which felt unique and could have been explored more. I also feel like there were so many missed opportunities for fun things like Rowe giving Cally a hard time while he is trying to impress Myla, and Myla potentially being entertained by this (I just get the sense she’d find it funny).

Overall this book was enjoyable but it wasn’t special compared to other installments in this series that I liked more.

[Bob Morrow · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 2/3rds of the book were good, full of the usual details found in this series. The last 1/3rd however gradually seemed going downhill in a rush to end the book. The final chapters felt more like fill in order to soften the landing. That’s what left a bit of a sour taste and caused the rating to also take a fall as well.