Apart from a few forays into the True World, a peek or two into Brightlords and the original sundering of all the alternate reality worlds that make up what could be a pretty awesome worldbuilding scenario, this book falls back into a pretty average fantasy read.

Our interesting MC is sidelined and tortured while the rest of the cast do their best to power up using the old magic system to break him out of the Wyrmling labyrinth. The potential for great character building is mostly lost, although it's not without its charms.

Seeing some of our great villains in an alternate world act all noble (indeed, be noble) in this one is actually rather cool. But Lady, or rather, Lord Despair?

It's kinda cookie-cutter and aside from giving off that whole Legend feel, it is what it is. Average.

I hope the last book gives this a good sendoff. ( )

In theory, each book should have a beginning, middle, and end. It's the beginning and end that readers enjoy the most. That is why I think many fans of the Runelord series dislike the latter books in the series; books 6 and 7 consist mostly of the boring middle part that we're just trying to get through to get to the end.

Instead, things just keep getting worse and worse, and it's to the point now that things are so bad there is no frame of reference anymore. It is difficult to relate to the characters because they suffer on a much greater scale than we do, thanks to runelore. Things are so bad that I can't take the situation seriously anymore. I hate it when authors make everything all happy butterflies and unicorns all the time, but this constant hopelessness is really difficult, and it's crossed the line of ridiculousness.

Nonetheless, I am still curious to see how this all ends, assuming it DOES end. However, I'm taking a break for a while. I want to read something that isn't drawn out forever without progress. ( )