Endgame

Merovingen Nights #7

by C.J. Cherryh (Editor), Janet E. Morris, Lynn Abbey

Thomas Mondragon and the spunky canaler, Altair Jones, face their greatest challenge when Altair must rescue Mondragon from imprisonment, even while fires and riots sweep through the city

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

352 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 6, 1991

About the author

Currently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. She is the author of more than forty novels. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work; she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

C.J. Cherry's Merovingen Nights series comes to an exciting (if somewhat abrupt) conclusion. Several plot threads never really got resolved (the Janes' ultimate plan, whatever was going on with the intelligent cat-whales back in Divine Right, the truth behind the sharrh, etc.), but I guess that's an inevitable consequence of a series written by multiple authors. Certainly a flawed saga, but ripe for a Game of Thrones-esque high-budget TV adaptation (if only to iron out some of the kinks!). 3.5.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

At last, Cherryh and company wrap up their little drama on the long-lost colony of Merovin in "Merovingen Nights: Endgame." Here, we see the culmination of all our major and minor players' scheming and planning come to fruition. With the assassination of the governor's son, Merovingen passes the breaking point and, in the midst of fire, civil disorder, and the ever popular play for power, one lone canaler and her aristocratic lover are stretched to their limits and it will be a miracle if either of them live to see the dawn.

[Macha]

3 and a half stars.

[Grey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was, ultimately, a passable conclusion to an excellent series. I loved the world and characters and intertwining story lines too much to give it any less than 3 stars, but this book felt rushed, as if the authors got short notice to tie things up. Because some fairly major plots were not only not tied up, they were never mentioned again.

The over-arching story ended plausibly. It ended well enough, in fact, that I wish it hadn't ended at all, and that may be, I suppose, the most important thing to take away from this review. For all its flaws, this was a great series, and I hated the flip the final page.