[Cause]

I have once again failed to get through this work. I should have trusted my first instinct. Still I want to know it ends but I can find no wiki entries or the like online. 3 Positive rep to the man who tells me the general plot details of books 3,4 and 5!

[TemperTantrum]

This is a general meandering summary of it all, it's not book by book because honestly, my memory isn't that good!

Azaer continues to gain strength and the Gods are on the backfoot; the Harlequin are spreading his message throughout the Land and he sets himself up in a city as a base of operations in the body of a child which the ruler of the city adores.

Isak keeps trying to combat both Azaer and Lord Styrax. Tila dies. It culminates in a huge battle at the end of the 3rd book with Isak summoning a dragon. Kohrad dies. Isak is killed by Styrax who's slightly pissed Isak killed his son.

Book 4 is Min going to Ghenna to retrieve Isak's soul with...soul housing guy...Morghien? and Xeliath's help. Has a conversation with Death because why not. Eventually Min finds him, spends some time reminding Isak who he is and why he needs to come back and fight for the Land. Isak eventually agrees. Isak is brought back just as Styrax is assaulting Narkang (and winning). Isak does some magic and the Gods of the upper circle are summoned. They do to Styrax what they did to Aryn Bwr and strip him of his powers, his name etc so that even his own followers don't remember him. They then banish him to same place Isak was.

Aaaand finally, Book 5, lots of building up to a final confrontation, the Land is breaking apart such that a giant demon (dragon?) arises from the earth randomly nearly the armies of Isak et al and is about to obliterate them before Isak tells it to go away. During the confrontation with Azaer, a few of the Gods of the upper circle are killed until Isak completes a ritual resulting in; 1) his complete dissolution and 2) Azaer being combined with Min so that while Azaer is now all powerful and has the strength of the Gods, it's blocked/controlled by Min. They're only approachable once every few decades or so so at the end we have a nice catch up session with all the remaining protagonists and Min, reassuring them that while he stays strong, Azaer can do nothing and commenting that Isak's final 'reward' is to be completely gone, beyond the grasp of anyone for everything he suffered.

Like i said, it's a poor summary but i'm going off when I read them years ago =P

Ironically, I'm rereading the series at the moment but only halfway through Book 2

[Mentalist]

There's also the sub-plot with the God of War choosing count Vesna to be his champion and avatar. Vesna refused at first, but then Azaer's assassins kill Tila, who he was going to marry, and he took the bargain.

Book 3 starts with one of Narkang's kings agents accepting to become the avatar of the goddess of Fortune- right before the goddess is killed. Lloyd really started to develop the "gods and their worshippers" dynamic along Malazan lines in the later books.

Cause, you should change the title to note there's loads of spoilers here, lol

EDIT: and bks 3-4 give a lot of PoVs on Styrax as well, so he's not left just a one-dimensional villain. That's probably one of the things I really liked about the series- no one is really "evil". Even Azaer is way more complex than he seems.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 14 November 2016 - 03:45 PM

[Cause]

On my phone, will change the title when I get home!

Okay that all sounds terrible! Yes I found book 2 is basically a theft of a malazan convergence and the harlequin seem to be straight up lifted from 40k Eldar. I think the rest is dnd!

By the end of book 2 I never once felt that styrax was evil. Except for the death of bahl (who frankly I was not attached to yet) no reason to dislike him at all. What was his goal motivation? Why should he be punished? Why did the gods not just intervene earlier without Isak?

What was azaers goal?

Did Arwyn bwr or the elves matter in the end? Did the vampires?

[Mentalist]

Styrax was trying to undermine the God's. He also committed near-genocide of the formerly-winged tribe, the ones who had God of Wind as patron.
Iirc, Styrax's driving motivation was to remove Death- for taking his wife. I could be very wrong with that.

There's limits on how much gods could (or would) interfere directly- that's why large portion of Bk3 is spent with various gods approaching mortals to be their tools. And the more Azaer's Harlequins meddled, the weaker the Gods became.

Azaer's exact nature is still unknown- he was "a shadow"- basically an extradimensional demon. His goal was to undermine the Pantheon (by using Harlequins to make people believe less and to stop worshipping the gods), and then use the McGuffin (the sword of the dead Goddess Life) to install himself himself the new divinity. And he partially succeeded,after being incarnated as a human child- though he got saddled with Min as a conscience.

Don't remember much about the elves unfortunately.

The vampires did- Vorizh, the younger brother (the crazy one) comes back. He's the one who ends up finding Life's sword. The older brother comes back and has another crack at Styrax, and is generally generally bad-ass.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 14 November 2016 - 04:27 PM

[TemperTantrum]

The elves seemed to fade out after Books 1 and 2 what with Isak not becoming Aryn Bwr which is a bit of a shame as there could have been some good PoV's there. The vampires got really interesting by the end and as Mentalist says, Koezh was pretty awesome.

Re; lack of intervention - I always got the impression that the Gods weren't really interested in the beginning as he wasn't doing anything directly to affect them. By Book 1 he's taking Chosen and Krann's out like it's going out of fashion but it's not until Azaer's rise and around Book 3 where he's really gunning for the Gods which is why they finally decide/are forced to act.

I must say I did quite enjoy the series when I first read it and the some of the concepts are good but these days in the back of my mind I just compare it to the Malazan series so when I see the Chosen/Krann here I start thinking of Ascendent's and Mortal Swords etc...

[Melnibonean Wanderer]

I read this long before I picked up GOTM. I enjoyed it at the time, but would probably have a hard time picking it up now, having read MBOTF.