This book was an odd ending to the trilogy. There were things I really liked and things I didn’t. Honestly, overall, I still don’t exactly know how I feel about this particular novel. I liked the second volume in the series the most and I do think this book the weakest in the series. Doesn’t mean I disliked _The Endless Knot_, but…well, let’s look at the particulars.Strong points first. Most of the book – a mild spoiler here I think – takes place not on Albion per se but another landmass, that of Tir Aflan, though located in the same world. A wasted, desolate, lonely place of windswept, damp moors and eerily silent woods, high craggy mountains buffeted by gale-force winds, I thought the sense of mystery and just the overall sense of being there were very well done. The descriptions were vivid, the haunted, anything can happen feel of the place was excellent, and it seemed so different from Albion that it created a lot of tension and interest. Two of the threads that were touched upon but never really dealt with any finality in the first two volumes – that mortals from the manifest world can’t stay in the Otherworld forever and that something bad in the Otherworld is negatively affecting the manifest world (our Earth) – get some real closure. For a time I had begun to wonder if those two series-long plot threads would reach their final conclusion and they did. There was a final confrontation with the main bad guys that were left; in so many fantasy series that could be said to be unending (or practically so), it was good to have a final showdown with a clear, decisive winner. Once again, some good battle scenes, particularly at the very end. There were some real twists in the fights and I enjoyed those twists. Combat description continued to be a strong point in the series. As a fan of fantasy when it mixes with horror (or vice versa) I thought that the continent of Tir Aflan and its strange, hideous creatures and the sense of dread and horror (Celtic horror is certainly something new to me) was very well done. There were horrible creatures, some real thrills and chills, and the great sense of unknown in that place was a favorite with me. There were some shocking deaths in the book, ones I did not see coming, and for that I commend the author. Given the s takes involved and the evil that was being confronted, it made sense that there would be some causalities along the way. I just never expected *those* particular people to die. Ok, now that is out of the way, the bad. Tir Aflan, virtually devoid of people, practically devoid of any normal animal, was desolate, ruined, nearly destroyed. As I said before, this was well described in terms of what it looked and felt like. Why it was desolate was never to my satisfaction really explained though. We get mysterious ruins, strange artifacts, enigmatic ruins of towers and cities, powerful weapons left by long vanished peoples…but no real sense of who the people of Tir Aflan were and why they became as they did. Maybe some enjoyed the mystery, but speaking for myself I would have liked more detail on the history of Tir Aflan. What went wrong? What were these people like? Were they evil? Why does what happened in Tir Aflan (mild spoiler here) affect Albion or the manifest world? I don’t want to spoil anything here (some reviewers already have I see) but Lawhead’s commitment to a single narrator for the course of the book puts things in an awkward position at the end. I won’t say anything more on that but was happened was odd and lead me to conclude things that the author might not have otherwise intended.Some have complained about the pacing of the book before the characters set out for Tir Aflan, about how Llew wants to build a mill and the overall lack of action in Albion. That didn’t bother me overly much and I saw some of what took place in those chapters as nice wrap ups to some of the happier threads in book two as well as to make clear to the reader what was at stake during the quest in Tir Aflan. Though I generally liked the strange monsters of Tir Aflan at one point many of them are chased off by a mysterious figure seen earlier in the series. I think too many supernatural beings are held too much at arm’s length in the series and it would have been interesting to get more information about this figure, see more of its use, and overall understand better its role in the world of Albion and in the trilogy as a whole. I will admit that I rarely read the long song/poems, particularly as they had either been included before, looked similar to ones that had been used before, or didn’t seem absolutely necessary to understand character motivations or actions or the overall plot. This may be a personal preference issue as I know Tolkien was fond of such things. They certainly seemed authentic to the setting but just weren’t of a lot of interest to me (though the stories that were related in the series, those I liked). Though the issue of how events in Albion (and Tir Aflan) affect the manifest world are dealt with, I never got a really good feel as to just how things were going wrong back on Earth. Perhaps that was unavoidable given that the vast majority of the books don’t take place on Earth, but still, even at the end, I never got all my questions answered as to what happened back in the manifest world. Maybe a few more chapters tacked on to the end might have helped. This has been remarked upon before, but another complaint is that there is a character that appears at the end of the series I had no idea who that was for a time. No spoilers here, but maybe a list of characters would have helped. Even reading the books back to back as I did didn’t immediately help. A minor problem to be sure, but one that I thought I would note. Overall it was a decent book, not as strong as book two and in some ways had a very different feel from the first two volumes in the trilogy, what with its strong horror element, not taking place in Albion for the most part but rather somewhere else, and the rather bittersweet ending. My complaints I don’t think are huge and the good for the most part outweighed the bad. It is definitely an end to the trilogy, an absolute one at that.
*Spoilers*I'm not really sure how to summarise my feelings about this book. The first two novels in the "Song of Albion" trilogy I thoroughly enjoyed. I found them to be refreshing and original considering that most other fantasy books tend to end up accidentally ripping off either "The Lord of The Rings" or "The Chronicles of Narnia" (or both). However, "The Endless Knot" seemed to both exceed and tumble far below my expectations. The first half of the book, without a doubt, convinced me this was going to be the best of the three. There's great plot development, and a few unpredictable events that allow the story to be shrouded in mystery. I liked, for instance, how it was uncertain whether or not the main character's presence in the otherworld and the lack of it in his own was partially or even entirely responsible for the new troubles arising in Albion. Lewis often seems to realise the possibility of him unknowingly introducing foreign concepts into Albion and thus contributing to the unraveling of the barrier between the two worlds. The book however, seems to slowly go downhill shortly after they arrive at Tir Aflan. The concept of another realm, unprotected and free for evil to inhabit was a new and welcome addition to the trilogy. Unfortunately, Mr. Lawhead (author) seems to be very good at setting the scene for the presence of evil and then ruining all he has built up shortly after. The "blood-sucking spirits" for example, were well introduced and easily more horrific than anything the author has presented to us before in the series. The description of the dead horse and the way its state and appearance seems to effect the rest of the company chills a reader to the bone. The description of what they are and what they are capable of is vague enough to leave much to the readers imagination and thus dreading the point when they appear in the book. Of course they do appear and they are not nearly as frightening as you thought they could be. This seems to repeat itself a lot throughout they're travels in Tir Aflan to a repetitive standard. The sacrificial lair of the worm in the temple is once again another horrifying and gripping moment in the book, which unfortunately ends in a dull and ill described battle in which many swords and spears are thrown at a large and unoriginal snake-like creature. Later on, the voices of the dead are also rather haunting until they actually appear in a form more grotesque than scary. Despite these disappointing encounters the story still remains enough to push the reader on for a while until we eventually come to a very overblown battle where swords and spears go against guns and machinery and we are reunited with characters we didn't expect and to be honest didn't really want to return.*Mega spoiler alert*We are then presented with the finale in which the main character (who by the way is narrating the story) is stabbed in the chest by his ex-best friend and then slowly burns to death while his pregnant wife weeps over the remains. All is well though! For the "Sure Swift Hand" completely restores Tir Aflan and all its miserable inhabitants by making them new and incinerating the bad people, thus ridding the world of evil for ever. The now dead main character then continues to describe to us everything from then on from the transporting of his body to the burying of it after which he suddenly reappears alive and well back in the world from whence he came. He of course writes down all of what has happened while an implied love interest between him and his now dead backstabbing best friends former girlfriend begins to develop.All in all I would like to have given 4 star for the first half of the book, and 2 stars for the second half, but since that isn't possible I'll just have to split the difference and give it a 3.
What do You think about The Endless Knot (2006)?
Evil will always triumph because good is dumb!Looks like Darth Helmet had it right my friends. Throughout the Song of Albion series Llew and friends keep getting owned by the bad guys because they have to follow the heroic rules, or the rules set down by the bards and history and all that. The bad guys don’t so they take credit for the good guys, sneak around them, and generally cause a lot of mischief. Luckily this is fiction so the good guys can still win in the end. Sort of.Case in point. Paladyr is a world class douche. He murdered the last King, raped and killed two of the three oracle sisters, and generally wreaked havoc throughout the countryside. In this book he pops back up and causes death, destruction, and theft of sacred items. But they catch him! He will be dragged before the King’s justice! Except not…. Apparently there’s this right call naud that means that he can claim. It means that all of his sins go to the King, in this case Llew. If Llew refuses to take them on then he’s less then the criminal. So Paladyr goes free to keep causing problems until the very end of the story. Yay! Bad guys get recycled in perpetuity. This whole series is written like a Celtic ley (or whatever the correct phrase is). If that interests you I’m sure you’d like this series a lot more then I have. It worked in the second book because the narrator was from the culture so it all made sense to him. The first and third books are narrated by someone from ‘our’ world so I was often lost. My biggest problems with the style are these: Since it’s all in the grand heroic style all the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good. The ones who change have only glancing attempts at motivation. All the characters feel like caricatures because they can’t act except in ways that would be approved of by the style. Plus it has a rhythm that’s freakishly slow. I’m not kidding. There is no real antagonistic force. It exists, but it doesn’t really put pressure on the good guys. They just do their own thing because they’re heroes, and heroes chase down and deal with bad guys. The few times there actually was a bad guy working against them he was the font of all evil that happens off screen. Worse was the ending. (view spoiler)[There was, I kid you not, an “it was all a dream” trope pulled. He died in Albion, and everyone you cared about moved on without him, then he came back to our world to live his life again. I have a hard time with the ‘man from our world goes to magic land’ trope as it is. This just felt like cheating. I’m sorry, but a whole long trilogy where I find out at the end that it all was a “renewal” rite and Llew/Lewis is going to write his experiences down in a book- that we all get to read. As he lives the same life he would have had but ‘made better by his experience’. Grrr. (hide spoiler)]
—Jennavier
This is book #3 of the Song of Albion series. There is treachery afoot in the Llew's glorious kingdom. His and his best friend's (Cynan) wife have been abducted. They spend the book trying to find the hostages on the barren island of Tir Aflan where nothing lives and to where evildoers have been cast off. Bothersome to me is how Llew repeatedly and headstrongly insists upon impetuously dashing off to do whatever emotion pulls him to do even though he knows better. And not only does he jump, but he becomes surly if he is restrained from doing so. For someone who is supposed to be so "golden" and who harbors a great bard's awen, he doesn't seem to learn so well! The leading men in this book seem to be a lot of bluster when thought would serve them better. And I have to laugh a little at all the times someone is advised against their own "jumping" but they get to do what they want because they "won't be denied." So much for order and ranks! All that aside, it's a good read full of suspense and intrigue. All the familiar faces make their appearances and one pulls for good to overcome evil. The ending surprises.
—Jackie
If I could cut this book in half and rate each one differently, I could. The first half = 1 star. Besides the fact next to nothing happened - a whole chapter on how he decides to build a mill, Really? Really? Because everyone just wants to read about that - and with Llews marriage it got a bit too sexual for me.The second half was much much better. I would give it 4 stars. Monsters, quests, action.The ending was a bit of a suprise (view spoiler)[ I liked how it turned into him writing the books in the end, but then realized that since the bard was the POV in book two, it doesn't actually work. Oops (hide spoiler)]
—Tori
