Haunted by a ghost from the future, Shilly and her man'kin allies are drawn into the snowbound mountains on a mission to save the world. Yod, trapped by the Castillo twins in the Void Beneath, may finally be close to breaking free. Hard on Shilly's heels are Sal and his father, and an uneasy alliance of Sky Wardens, Panic, and foresters. The stakes are high. Strange and ancient forces struggle for ascendancy, including the glast and a dragon with its own agenda. If the Goddess rises from her Tomb the fate of the Ice Eaters will be sealed, and they will kill anyone who tries to get in their way....
#1 New York Times bestselling Sean Williams lives with his family in Adelaide, South Australia. He’s written some books--forty-two at last count--including the Philip K. Dick-nominated Saturn Returns, several Star Wars novels and the Troubletwister series with Garth Nix. Twinmaker is a YA SF series that takes his love affair with the matter transmitter to a whole new level. You can find some related short stories over at Lightspeed Magazine and elsewhere. Thanks for reading.
On its individual merits this series was by no means a masterpiece, although the first book was different and inspiring.
The sum of all its parts, however, made this absolutely brilliant. Not the least of which being that Williams can actually write women. It may say equally unkind things about both the SciFi/fantasy genre at large and ME, that I was so bloody startled to learn the author isn't female.
It shouldn't be shocking when women are written as well as men, it shouldn't be shocking when an author can write a gender well which is different to their own. However, these are still minority occurrences and it's amazing and heartening to find them both existing in the same author/series that I also absolutely loved.
As a huge SciFi/fantasy consumer I am ashamed that I was unaware of Sean Williams before now, but better late than never.
[4 and 1/2 stars] This is very satisfying conclusion to the Books of the Cataclysm, I think. While it may lack a little of the gravitas and sheer weirdness of the earlier books (or maybe I'm just used to this universe by now :-P), it's still a very cohesive drawing together of lots of disparate threads, with some some startling plot developments, rousing action sequences (including a battle to dwarf all that came before) and the same care taken with characterisation. Well done, Sean Williams! I can't wait to read more of your books :-).