** The Colors Mix to Brown **
I’m a fan of Robert Jackson Bennett is one of a handful of authors for whom I would read a new release no questions asked. Perhaps this time I should have asked more questions, because Locklands did not work for me. In the third installment of The Founders Trilogy, our favorite setting turned protagonist turned antagonist has taken over most of the world. A few main characters, along with a macguffin-turned-character, must race to stop diabolical plans and adventures ensue.
Unfortunately, the machinations adventures, settings and hijinks all start running together. We visit many new places and even new times through teleportation and fanciful measures, shedding the rich environment that Bennett created in the first two novels. The magic, known as scriving, seems to follow arbitrary rules that can be overwritten at will by other, higher powers, making the system arcane enough to be gibberish. Inevitably some spell will come at a great personal cost to some character, trying to lend emotional weight to an otherwise anti-gravity plot. Finally even the characters meld together as different hives of characters intersperse and shift personalities from one to another. Using all the colors all the time leads this book to a shade of brown, and by the end I didn’t care about the characters, the setting, or the plot.
** 59th book of 2022 **