Reaver the Sundering Book IV Book Review

The Reaver

Richard Lee Byers

Wizards of the Coast

Pub Date: Feb 4 2014

5/5 Stars

              

               Reaver is an incredible book.  Not so much for the story, although I did really love the story.  But the way that the author takes great pains in bringing the point of view of all of his main characters to bear throughout the work.  I was often delighted and surprised by it the frequency at which the point of view character changed.  Sometimes only for a chapter, sometimes for more than a chapter.  Obviously Anton was the main character of the book, but the way that the perspective shifted the reader might think that Stedd or even Umara might be main characters.  The reason, that this was important was that the motivations and certainly the off stage actions of these point of view characters were essential to the story and made the entire narrative much richer for having them.

             This was a very well written work with an interesting plot and some wonderful characters, I was also happy to see that some evil gods were finally added to the Sundering’s reveal of Chosens.  It was getting rather boring with just the good aligned gods being represented.  Also, speaking of boring if I never read about the Morning Lord again it will be too soon.  I will be very happy if that particular god is no longer represented in this series or it is simply explained why he is being represented so often.  He is not a deity I remember from the pre-Spellplague Faerun and therefore seems completely trivial to me.  Except that this is the second book to  cast him as the main deity.   One was enough, two is starting to make me think there is more to this than simple coincidence and that’s fine as long as there is.

             The only things that annoyed me about this book were it’s slow start and the use of, “Spell and sword.”  And “Magic and blade.”  These are both used too often(more than once) and I found the phrases incredibly annoying.  The slow start might have been necessary for some characterization but I felt the first 20% or so of the book could have been tightened up a little.  Otherwise, I really loved this book and hope that the rest of the books in the series of the same quality you will find here.