The Fall of the Dagger by Glenda Larke

The Fall of the Dagger by Glenda Larke is the final book in the Forsaken Lands trilogy. I have previously read and reviewed the first two books, The Lascar's Dagger and The Dagger's Path. I should warn you, the very blurb for The Fall of the Dagger contains spoilers for the earlier two books, as will my review.

A king corrupted, a sorcerer on the throne, a land in peril…

Excommunicated cleric Saker returns from exile in the Spice Islands to find his homeland in chaos.

A dark sorcerer controls the ear of the King, turning him against his own son and heir, while a corrupted army gathers in the shadows.

With the illusionist Sorrel and islander Ardhi, armed with magic from Ardhi’s homeland, Saker now must stand between his city and the corruption that threatens to cripple it, before it is too late . . .

I have always enjoyed Glenda Larke's work and The Forsaken Lands trilogy has been no exception. I definitely see myself rereading it at some point, especially since I expect the trilogy will be even more enjoyable if read in quick succession, rather than with a year-long gap in between books.

Nevertheless, picking up The Fall of the Dagger a year after the previous instalment was not difficult to get back into. The three main characters, Saker, Sorrel and Ardhi, return to the Va-cherished hemisphere with some idea of how to defeat the evil sorcery that has taken over the land. Saving the world, however, is never easy and the three of them can't do it alone.

I quite liked that it actually took a lot of people working together to win the day, and not just the chosen three, so to speak. Also, I enjoyed the post-climax action. Usually, the world is saved and that's the end of it, but Larke bothered to show that it's not quite that clean and easy to resolve everything when the bad stuff has been building up for several years. And I think that's as much as I can say without spoilers, really.

I really enjoyed this series and highly recommend it to all fans of BFF (big fat fantasy) books, especially anyone looking for worlds beyond the standard medieval Europe setting. This is also not the kind of series where you can pick up the later books without having read the earlier books, so I definitely recommend starting with the multi-award-winning The Lascar's Dagger if you are new to this series. If you've already read the earlier books, why wouldn't you pick up this one? Go on— don't you want to see how it all ends?

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: April 2016, Orbit
Series: Book 3 of 3 of The Forsaken Lands trilogy
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Google Play
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge