A travelogue-style fantasy adventure, where the protagonist and her man visit thinly disguised versions of the Aztec and Inca Empires. Less sex and politics than previous books in this series, more hacking through jungles.

The middle part was quite engrossing, but the ending felt rather weak and overlong to me, and I never had much sense that the protagonist was in any danger, as her magical powers got her out of most situations. ( )

I love Jacqueline Carey's writing, but have to admit that the previous books of Moirin's trilogy didn't captivate me as much as her previous Terre D'Ange work. But this last installment held everything that first captivated me in Phedre's trilogy. I have only one complaint; ants *shudders*. Why'd it have to be ants? ( )

I love Jacqueline Carey. I love Morin's world. I loved Desire and the journey and Alba and so much else. This book was just as good as every other Terre Ange book before it. And I won't even hint at what's in it, because you shouldn't know.

But I think this is one of the series everyone in the world should read. ( )

This was definitely my favorite of the Moirin trilogy. I wasn't looking forward to another far-flung journey, but Carey's description of the beauty and terror of Terra Nova and its people was compelling. I liked the deepening relationship between her and Bao and -- most of all -- the way this book gracefully gathered up some of the elements of previous books and brought them to resolution. ( )

This was the very last book in the trilogy of trilogies that makes up Kushiel’s Universe. This last book had a good story that mostly held my attention straight through, and I was satisfied with how everything wrapped up. It’s often difficult for me to say much about the last book in a long series, so the rest of this review is more about the series as a whole.

This was a good series. Not perfect, but enjoyable to read. I occasionally felt mildly impatient when I thought things were being dragged out overly long, but mostly it held my attention well and I always looked forward to sitting down to read more. The characters are fleshed out well, and the stories are mostly interesting. They’re the sort of epic fantasy stories where you spend a lot of time growing up with each new main character, and there’s a lot of political issues and maneuvering and quite a bit of introspection, so that won’t appeal to everybody, but those things usually appeal to me. There’s also a fair bit of adventure. There’s very little magic in the earlier books, but that increases in the second and especially third trilogies.

Each trilogy is told from the first-person perspective of a different character and has an overarching storyline, but each book within that trilogy tells a full story with just a few threads that are carried through to the other books. The first two trilogies are more closely related to each other. They take place closely together in the timeline and characters from the first trilogy are often seen in the second. The third trilogy takes place quite a bit later and features an entirely new cast of characters. The middle trilogy was my favorite. Its stories appealed to me the most, and I adored the main character.

As I’ve mentioned in some of my previous reviews, these books have quite a lot of sex. Additionally, each trilogy has a romantic storyline running through it. I would have been happier with less of both things, but it was mostly done well. There were some sections that were too angsty for me, but aside from that the author didn’t use any of the romance tropes that annoy me the most, and she did write the relationships convincingly. I liked that she didn’t drag things out forever and allowed the characters to settle into more secure relationships with each other. I enjoyed it more when the characters were confident in their relationship and were working together to achieve common goals.

Aside from the romance, the stories feature relationships of all sorts, and I thought they were written very well. Characters and character relationships are definitely where the author excels most, but the stories and world-building were good too. At some point, not in the near future, but eventually, I would like to check out some of her other work. ( )