By Kat Ross
Pages: 374
Date Finished: Jan 15, 2017
Lo
ved It
- I received this book free though Xpresso Book Tours. Follow the Queen of Chaos book tour here.
Synopsis:
Persepolae has fallen.Karnopolis has burned.
As the dark forces of the Undead sweep across what remains of the empire, Nazafareen must obey the summons of a demon queen to save Darius’s father, Victor. Burdened with a power she doesn’t understand and can barely control, Nazafareen embarks on a perilous journey through the shadowlands to the House-Behind-the-Veil. But what awaits her there is worse than she ever imagined…
A thousand leagues away, Tijah leads a group of children on a desperate mission to rescue the prisoners at Gorgon-e Gaz, the stronghold where the oldest daēvas are kept. To get there, they must cross the Great Salt Plain, a parched ruin occupied by the armies of the night. A chance encounter adds a ghost from the past to their number. But will they arrive in time to avert a massacre?
And in the House-Behind-the-Veil, Balthazar and the Prophet Zarathustra discover that they have more in common than meets the eye. But is it enough to redeem the necromancer’s bloodstained soul and thwart his mistress’s plans?
As a final showdown looms with Queen Neblis, the truth of the daēvas’ origins is revealed and three worlds collide in this thrilling conclusion to the Fourth Element series.
Review:
I reviewed the first two books in this series, The Midnight Sea and the Blood of the Prophet last year – read that review here.
Queen of Chaos picks up right where Blood of the Prophet left off (These books are so fast paced and each picks up where the previous left off and I recommend reading them all back-to-back.) Our hero’s are scattered after the fall of Xeros’ empire to Alexander. Tijan and a group of daēvas children travel across a barren landscape ravaged by the hordes of undead from Bactria. Nazafareen and Darius travel into the dominion searching after Victor, and eventually they get separated too. The tight group of former Water Dogs is no more, and each must find there own way in a world in chaos.
You really need to read the first two books to be invested enough in this world to understand all the thread and currents in The Queen of Chaos. The story is complicated without being convoluted, and I think that’s really an accomplishment. Too many modern fantasy stories think they have to be so expansive, with so many characters, and so much going on that the reader can easily loose some of the threads or become disinterested. (I’m reading another series right now and the final book it giving me this exact problem, there is so much going on I can hardly keep it all straight and it spends a lot of time on story lines that don’t seem to be moving the plot forward.) Ross keeps this the book balanced while moving the action forward.
There are several character development twist that came to me a quite a pleasant surprise. Without giving away any spoilers, the way things work out between Nazafareen and Neblis really caught my interest. It could have easily fallen into a fantasy troupe, but not only did it get turned on it’s head, the whole way things worked out for the bad guys was atypical, and I enjoyed that.
Of course, there are new monsters, big battles, and plenty of action in the book too.
Bottom Line:
Wow! Kat Ross knows how to write an epic.
The twists and turns the books takes as it leads up to the final conflicts swept me along. The world of the Forth Element yielded up some more of it’s secrets, but not all. It left me wanting more. Wanting to dig deeper and spend more time in the fantasy version of Persia that Ross built up. (In fact, over on my Tumblr I am doing an Owl-A-Day doodle and dedicated one day to owls inspired by ancient Persian art.)
I highly recommend this series. And right now the first book, The Midnight Sea is free for Kindle.
Purchase:
Amazon