Welcome everyone. Today I’ll be reviewing When Darkness Falls by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory, the third installment and the conclusion of The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy. SPOILER ALERT.
This last book begins where To Light A Candle ended, with our heroes casting the most powerful spell they’ve all participated in—even Cilaren, who gets sick whenever he is near any sort of Wild Magic, is there—to learn why the Endarkened have not engaged them in open battle yet, as they did before in the First and Great Wars. At this point, they’ve only had skirmishes and combats with lesser creatures of the Dark, like goblins, coldwargs, and duergar, but most significantly, shadow elves, whose last enclave within the Elven lands has not been found yet. However, with this spell, Kellen and his friends learn two things: (1) that the Endarkened have infiltrated the protection wards of Armethalieh, which do not let any sort of magic, except High Magic, be cast in the city, by having a member of the Council of Mages working for them and who has been trying to convince the other members of the council to ally themselves, and the city, with the Endarkened against Wild Magic and every other extant non-human creature in the Obsidian Universe, a plan which will effectively give all of High Magick’s power to the Endarkened and (2) that the Endarkened can only be killed with both Wild Magic and High Magic together; hence, if Armethalieh does ‘ally’ itself with the Endarkened, then Wild Magic and the other creatures of the Light will have no way to defeat them, and will eventually lose and die at the hands of demons.
Idalia watched in sick horror as Anigrel murdered Lord Vilmos. It was worse than she’d imagined, worse than anyone had feared. Anigrel was the Demons’ creature; had been for years. And now he’d managed to reach a position where he would soon be able to strip away Armethalieh’s defenses, and let the Demons in. He was going to give them the City. And all she could do was watch.
Hence, the stakes are pretty high. There’s only one problem. Well, several. One, Cilarnen does not have anywhere to draw his power from now that he is outside Armethalieh, where he and every other High Mage in the city drew power from the common citizens of Armethalieh; it also doesn’t help that he is the only High Mage fighting for the army of the Light. Second, Vestakia has still been unable to find the location of the last Enclave of the Shadow Elves, and (3) there is a new disease that is slowing spreading throughout the continent, including the most faraway cities of the Elves and their army. Even the king of the Elves is sick now.
So, things couldn’t get worse. And Kellen knows it. If the king dies, the elves would be leaderless (considering that the king’s wife and son are currently locked up in the elves’ strongest fortress, and she cannot rule from there (especially now that she is pregnant), a strategy that the king of the Elves and his council agreed to in a desperate attempt to keep the Elven race alive if the Endarkened won) and their morale would reach an all-time low. Kellen doesn’t want to admit it, but the Endarkened are winning…
I liked how this book does a good job at putting the characters in the direst of situations within the war against the Endarkened to a point where you think that nothing else could go wrong for them…but then something else goes wrong, and the likelihood of them defeating the Endarkened just gets slimmer and slimmer. And this is an allusion to the book’s title: When Darkness Falls. However, the Light is not completely helpless and defenseless. It has one Knight-Mage, one High-Mage, one Elven-Mage, one dragon, several Wild-Mages, chief among them Idalia and her brother, a herd of unicorns, and an entire army. But one of the most interesting and well done things in this trilogy is our heroes’ antagonist and villain. The Endarkened are spiteful, vengeful, cruel, self-interested, power-hungry, remorseless, merciless and every other bad adjective you can think of. They murder, burn, and torture their enemies for their blood, they manipulate their own kind and others for power…they are ultimate evil. They are one of the best villains I’ve read in fantasy, and I found myself rooting for this villain as much as I rooted for our heroes. I really liked them.
Ultimately, the Endarkened are defeated with an act of selfless love and sacrifice that is so strong in itself that it can counteract all of the demons’ self-interest and manipulative nature; an act that they themselves would never consider performing because it is against their very essence and personalities. But it is the ultimate act of love that kills the Demon Queen and everything she represents and begins a new era within the universe of Obsidian Mountain. An era of peace and flowering…
This book is a strong and satisfying conclusion to the Obsidian Mountain Trilogy, and one of my favorites reads of the year. I enjoyed it just as much as I did when I first read it in 2006, and plan to keep it in my shelves as a must-read for any fantasy fan.
Rating: New Favorite
