Book Review – Wrath of a Mad God
Author: Raymond E. Feist
Cover Artist: Steve Stone
Publisher: Eos
Binding: Hardcover
Publication Date: 2008
Wrath of a Mad God is the conclusion of the Darkwar saga. The third of five riftwars Feist intends to cover. The past couple of years he’s been sidetracked by a number of other projects set in the connected worlds of Kelewan and Midkemia. Since the publication of Shards of a Broken Crown in 1998 nine books appeared none of which dealt directly with a riftwar. So when he picked up the main story in 2005 with the first book on the Darkwar, Flight of the Nighthawks (a very unfortunate title if you ever watched the English comedy ‘Allo ‘Allo), I considered it long overdue. I have to admit though, this is the best book Feist has written since Rage of a Demon King (1997). A good thing too, the first two books in this series did not inspire confidence in a brilliant finale.
The story picks up where Into a Dark Realm ended. Pug, Nakor, Magnus and Ralan Bek have made it to the second plane of reality, where the Dasati home world is located, and have just run into Marcos the Black in a Dasati body. Miranda has been captured by the Dasati, Leso Varen is still on the loose somewhere on Kelewan and Jommy, Tad and Zane are on a mysterious mission under the command of Kaspar of Olasko, somewhere in a remote mountain range on Midkemia. All of them encounter evidence the Dark God is on his way up to the first plane of reality. Kelewan to be precise. The consequences of this creature getting there would be nothing short of disastrous.
Feist’s riftwars are usually fought on two levels, one with battle with conventional armies, another on a divine scale. Wrath of a Mad God has it’s share of physical violence of course but in no other book Feist has written is manipulation of events by the Gods as important. Nakor, Pug and Bek are carefully placed pawns in a game with the highest stakes yet. Nakor and the Midkemian gods put a number of events in previous books in a new perspective. Not always a good thing as Feist has made us reassess some of these events before. What is presented as the truth usually turns out to be a partial truth at best. That being said the book does tie up a number of loose ends, some of which have been around since the original riftwar series. At the end of the book it is quite obvious that there will be another riftwar but it does provide a sense of closure. In a way this book is the end of many things.
The final book of the Darkwar saga contains all the elements of Feist’s previous Riftwar books. It is not particularly renewing but it does give me the idea that Feist gave finishing this trilogy his best shot. It’s been a while since I felt like that about one of his books. Of course, he still writes poor female characters, draws out irrelevant story lines and rushes others and he still doesn’t peer deeply into the human soul. But if you got this far in his history of the Riftwars you should be able to ignore than in favour of pure entertainment and a fast paced, action packed story. And, especially toward the end of the book, Feist certainly delivers that.
I won’t say this book is perfect, there are some minor but glaring inconsistencies between Wrath of a Mad God, the Serpent War books and the original Rifwar books for instance. I also still don’t understand why Feist introduced Tad, Zan and Jommy, their part in the story isn’t all that relevant. The introduction of Jimmy the Hand’s great-great grandson (if I counted correctly) seems like an unnecessary move. Still, with a convincing finale to this book and the Darkwar series I think Feist managed to keep me on board for the Demonwar. Let’s hope he doesn’t decide to finish the missing two Krondor books first though.
About Rob: 
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.