Air

The worst review this book was ever likely to get - the one that I was composing in my head even as I opened it - would have been something like “Well, it was good in itself but it’s a pity it didn’t wrap the four book series up that well.” But, I don’t need that review. I am very pleased to report that it’s a stonking five star end to the series.

I don’t want to give away the plot, or how things conclude. This has been a set of four quite different, but linked, stories. They are linked not just by the characters appearing in them in a pleasing cyclic manner but also by the thread of sexual abuse that runs through them. I do kind of think it’s a bit of a cheat to have published them as four separate books, though everything I said in my write up of Fire still holds and I’m quite happy to have a nice quartet of hardbacks on my bookshelf.

About the only thing I could find to criticise is the framing of time through the series. All four are written with technology references that make them contemporary and yet about twenty years, perhaps more, must have passed over the course of the stories. Perhaps I’ll have a reread in 2045 and see whether the time frame still seems a bit odd.

It’s been a fabulous series, I’m both pleased that it’s concluded and sorry to have finished reading it.