Sovereign

In Sovereign, Simon Brown closes out his Keys of Power trilogy, and I have to say it is one of the most intense, absorbing fantasy series I have ever read, evolving from an entertaining but seemingly pedestrian fantasy adventure about an exiled prince into a shockingly dark tale that left me wondering up through the very last page just how things could possibly turn out in the end. In Inheritance, we first met young Prince Lynan, a youth looked down upon by his royal siblings and largely ignored by his mother the queen because he was the son of a commoner (albeit the greatest general Grenda Lear had ever produced). Framed for regicide, he fled the kingdom in the company of Kumul, his mentor and ex-captain of the palace guard; Ager, a crookbacked soldier who fought alongside Lynan's father in the Slaver War; and a young female magicker named Jenrosa Alucar - and the Key of Unity, one of the four Keys of Power that were distributed among Queen Usharna's four children at the time of her death. Lynan was young and naïve, but he gradually grew into the true son of his father, a military leader determined to return to Grenda Lear and reclaim what had been stolen from him. Back home, his half-sister Areava, having succeeded to the throne after the murder of her older brother, committed herself to destroying the half-brother she believed guilty of the crime - never realizing that a most treacherous conspiracy involving a neighboring kingdom raged underneath her very nose. In the distant Oceans of Grass, Lynan united the nomadic Chetts and began a civil war that would eventually involve every province across the land of Theare. For the first half of the series, I worked under the assumption that every thing would work out in the end - Lynan was innocent of the crime that sent him into exile, after all. Then, in the latter half of Fire and Sword, Brown hit me with the literary equivalent of a one-two punch that left me reeling in absolute shock at the tragedy and horror unleashed upon all sides of this epic conflict. Naturally, I could not wait to see how the storyline would evolve in this third and final novel of the trilogy. Even with my blinders now off, I really had no idea how this epic saga would end. Sovereign is filled with both the thrills and visceral horrors of battle. Bloodied by his first encounter with the army of Grenda Lear, Lynan and his Chett allies not only regroup, they expand their war plans diplomatically as well as militarily. Lynan himself is greatly changed, devolving into something both more than and less than human as the life-saving blood of a vicious wood vampire haunts and transforms him into a frightening spectre that fills his enemies - and eventually even his friends - with dread. The once-noble young hero becomes a bloodthirsty killer who displays no mercy to those who stand in his way. His closest friends and allies are powerless to contain him in his madness - not so long as he is prey to the torments of