The third and final book of Roanhorse's series finds Serapio in control of the city of Tova, dealing with people who feign obedience while plotting behind him, and enemies lurking beyond the borders ready to strike. Naranpa has journeyed to the far north, seeking to understand and wield the powers of the Sun God that exist within her. Xiala makes an uneasy return to her homeland, only to realize it was ill-prepared for what involvement in war brings.
Each of three has been touched or selected by a god to act as an avatar, and so each has to make their own attempt to come to grips with that, and to try and hold onto their own desires in the face of their god's will. Xiala seems to fare best, but she's also the one whose god isn't locked in a struggle with its opposite. It feels significant that Serapio was forced on this path as a child by adults too wrapped up in their own desire for revenge, and Naranpa had high ideals of how she could reform Tova and the Watchers' role in it once she became Sun Priest, Xiala fits into neither case. Whatever role her mother, the queen, tried to impose on her Xiala escaped it for years, and she never sought a position of leadership, but uneasily bore it when the situation demanded it.
And then there's Balam, who started all this when he hired Xiala to captain a boat taking Serapio to Tova. He has his own dreams of becoming a great ruler, but he's always acting in the background. He taught himself blood sorcery, which requires someone pay, but he's very good at getting other people to do the paying. Whatever claims he makes about loving Serapio's mother, he's ultimately in this not for love or not duty or even revenge. He just has an inflated image of himself.
With this being the homestretch of the story, characters start dying, and Roanhorse's writing is a little frustrating to deal with there. Sometimes she'll give the initial impression, via one character's perspective, that another character died, leaving me impressed she opted to kill that character then, rather than wait for the climax. Except we find out a few chapters later that they survived. Then later in the book we're again given a situation where one character is certainly confident that they've killed another, enough they don't watch to make sure. This time we're apparently meant to take it that, yes, the character in question really did die. But it's hard for me to do that given the earlier surprise.
To be fair, I think it annoyed me because she had Lord Tuun somehow survive when Xiala called up a freaking kraken to attack Tuun's boat. Especially since the only explanation we're given is Tuun survived by sheer luck (Tuun's words), which is not much of an answer. Tuun does meet a bad end, but I'm rarely satisfied by one scumbag getting it in the neck from another.
Still, the book is easy to keep reading, fast-paced and with a nice mix of tension and calmer scenes. Roanhorse is good about choosing when to switch between plot threads, as sometimes she'll stick with one character or another for a few chapters in a row, while other times she switches between them each chapter. There are a lot of moving parts, but she keeps the characters largely distinct and with their own arcs or conflicts, their own decisions that can impact what the main characters do.
'Men crumbled, blood erupting from their ears as they vomited. Others flopped and jerked on the ground. The remaining spearmaiden staggered to her feet and cocked back her arm, ready to launch her spear.
Xiala modulated her voice, reaching for a minor note, and hurled it at the maiden. The woman shattered. There was no other way to explain it, as her body burst into pieces.'
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