If it feels like the end of a series ramping up for one gigantic blow-out bypassing some of the lesser dimensions of hell and driving a knife out of the fifth circle into our favorite realm... THEN IT IS.

Demons. A whole world of demons and dimensions rent of life. With nothing left but demons who suck the life force from everything... and then themselves... when they have nothing else to feed on.

Hello, new and powerful characters and parallel dimension elves who have been fighting a losing battle against demons for as long as they have history. :) Hello, references to the Chaos Wars. Hello, warlocks.

Need help? Come one, come all to the middle realm where the final battle of all realities is about to explode. :)

Poor Pug. I know he was prepared for this, but no one is really PREPARED for this, you know? ( )

Rides a Dread Legion is the first book in the Demonwar Saga duology, which is the second-to-last subseries in Raymond E. Feist’s very, very long Riftwar Cycle.

I had similar problems with this book as I did with the first book in the previous subseries. I struggled through the first half due to how much recapping took place. We have new characters who randomly pause to muse over known history or legends for the sake of reminding the reader about events in previous books, and then we have the even more blatant recaps from the old and familiar characters as they remind each other about things they all experienced, or recollect those things in their heads.

Since I usually read series books close together, I’m not the best person to judge how much recapping is too much, but this seemed like way too much to me. For readers randomly jumping in at this point, the story makes enough sense without knowing all the nitty-gritty details of the back story. For readers who have read those previous books, part of the fun of reading a series is catching and understanding all the connections between books for yourself without having them spoon fed to you. At least, that’s part of the fun for me. I do accept that tedious recaps are one of the downsides of the way I choose to read series books, but Feist seems to have taken it to an excessive level in some of his later series starter books.

The second half did really pick up and the book introduces some interesting new things. I had a lot of real-world distractions going on while reading this, so I think that partly explains why I had so much trouble powering through the recaps. Once the story picked up and there were fewer recaps, it held my interest far easier despite the same amount of distractions. I’m looking forward to the second book as I expect it to be less recap-filled and more focused on the story introduced in this book.

I have a couple comments with a pretty big spoiler for the end of this book:
Miranda and Caleb died at the end, so it was a pretty sad ending. I won’t miss Miranda; I found her irritating. I felt bad for Pug and Magnus though. I was sorry to see Caleb die because I liked his character even though we haven’t seen much of him lately. Unlike Nakor’s death in the previous book, these two deaths came as more of a surprise to me. I expected them to die eventually, I just wasn’t expecting it to happen right then. Of course, you never know when an apparently-dead character will show up again. However, this seems to be a continuation of the fulfillment of the warning Pug received many, many books ago (and that has been repeated in nearly every book since) that he’d have to watch everybody he cares about die. So I’m not really expecting any reversals and I am expecting more deaths.

I'm getting a teensy bit tired of how every series tells us that the things our characters thought were going on in the previous series weren’t actually what they thought. It seems like there’s always some new player who’s really manipulating everything, including manipulating the previous subseries’ new player who our characters incorrectly believed at that time was “really manipulating everything”. It’s getting to the point where I laugh every time it happens. :) I wonder who will really, really, really be manipulating everything by the end of the whole series! Maybe we’ll find out Pug has an evil twin. ( )

Het 25e(!!) deel uit een serie, en het eerste deel van deze sub-reeks. Een beetje volgens het stramien uit andere delen, met een invasie/scheuringen/demonen. Hoewel de achtergrond redelijk word weergegeven en je het verhaal goed kan volgen zonder de vorige delen gelezen te hebben, adviseer ik toch om deze toch eerst te lezen. Boek heeft een langzame start, daar Feist tot ongeveer halverwege nog bezig is met het voorstellen van de nieuwe personages. Einde voelde wat gejaagd aan.

Een ras van krijger-elven vecht voor een verloren zaak tegen horden demonen. Om uitsterven te voorkomen zoeken zij naar hun verloren thuiswereld. Het licht echter niet in hun aard om andere rassen als hun gelijken te beschouwen, zij kennen alleen maar de drang om die (met geweld) te overheersen.

Tegelijkertijd worden er steeds meer demonen waargenomen in Midkemia en een van de tempels zend er een Ridder-Amant op uit om dit te onderzoeken. Het idee van weer een invasie door demonen is nu wel een beetje te veel aan het worden. Misschien dat Feist in de laatste 4 boeken met iets anders komt, maar dat betwijfel ik

De toekomst van de wereld, en misschien zelfs wel van het heelal staat op het spel.

Wat ik niet snap is waarom Miranda vier nachten wachtte op wat er ging gebeuren in het kamp van de 'zwarte hoeden', en niet eerder daar terug kwam om opruiming te houden. Ook begrijp ik niet waarom Puc, die in '[b:De toorn van een waanzinnige god|6054107|De toorn van een waanzinnige god (De Saga van de Duistere Oorlog, #3)|Raymond E. Feist|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1230664098s/6054107.jpg|1184368] een scheuring/poort kon maken om een deel van de maan van Kelewan die planeet te laten verwoesten, maar hij kon geen bescherming voor zijn huis maken?!

Tijd voor het volgende boek [b:Voor de poorten van het duister|8698486|Voor de poorten van het duister (De saga van de Demonenoorlog, #2)|Raymond E. Feist|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1280779228s/8698486.jpg|6893554] ( )

Unfortunately, i don't own the final part of the Darkwar series so i don't see how the Dasati are defeated so in this book, i was faced with a new series that features a fourth offshoot of the elven race, the taredhel, the star elves, had had their own empire out amongst the stars building up a harsh life after their abandonment by the valheru. These people had fallen foul of demons breaching of one of their rifts who had smashed that empire flat back to their home world. An expedition searching for a safe redoubt surprised himself by finding their mythical birth world and the young ruler of their people decreed that all those who could were to go there as the warriors held off the final demonic assault.. Of course, such an influx of strangers wouldn't go unnoticed and the queen of the elves is intrigued to hear of a new group of elves. The Conclave of Shadows finds itself in the story of someone claiming to hunt demons but they finds he's more interesting than they were expecting

This was a great book, taking the surviving characters in some new directions that, on this reread, left me wanting to read more about the situation though I didn't think so at the time as this was the last Feist book I bought. ( )

haven't read it yet, can't untag the star ( )