Books Beyond the Shadows (Night Angel, #3)

Read online Beyond the Shadows (Night Angel, #3).pdf PDF, EPUB, MOBI, TXT, DOC Beyond the Shadows (Night Angel, #3) The Night Angel trilogy reaches its climax with Beyond the Shadows, in which Logan Gyre desperately tries to rally people behind him in order to create an army for Cenaria, a new Godking emerges, Kylar and Elene try to make the most of their relationship, Vi gets educated at the Chantry, and an old friend finally emerges from behind the shadowy curtain of death.Unfortunately, many problems I already had with the previous two books in this series were not avoided or rectified in any manner. Clichés and genre tropes still run abundant, culminating in Elene’s final sacrifice and the way in which Kylar’s and Vi’s rings are broken, and character development is simply not present. The aforementioned clichés and genre tropes are mostly related to sexism, providing the readers with an unhealthy idea and view of sex, purity and women in general. Women still only come in two tastes, pure saints and vile sluts, and the agency and/or power of almost every female character is defined by her sexuality and beauty or lack thereof.A new problem fully emerged within this book as well, of which the first hints were already prevalent in book two, Shadow’s Edge: huge gaps in the storyline. From one chapter to the next, months can pass, and one riddle mentioned in the first chapter is suddenly solved by the presence of a person and/or item in the chapter directly following it. Brent Weeks does not interweave his storylines properly – even though everything connects and all loose ends are dealt with eventually, the story itself has huge gaps in it that the readers themselves will have to fill in. Previous important characters simply leave the scene, like Momma K and Uly, and due to the gaps in storytelling, the character development that Weeks does try to provide us with, feels fake. A prime example of this is Vi, who suddenly has turned into a paragon of a battle mage at the Chantry and has built up a deep love of her fellow sisters – we have not seen this happen in any way. We simply have to take it for granted, because it’s missing from the story.Gaps and other inconsistent oddities occur frequently. Kylar suddenly learns to heal deathly wounds within mere seconds (and acquires this ability in mere seconds too, nonetheless), another character is able to sprout wings of which we had never heard of before, Elene claims to have had the plan to give herself up to evil willingly from the moment she left even though she ran into said evil coincidently, and so on and so forth. Freir retrieves a sword without knowing about it and we never know how he did it, Solon is in the right place at the right time with the right item even though in the previous chapter, he promised his love he would not go… I could go on forever.Dorian, a character whom I found profoundly interesting in the first two books, is supposed to have this character arc in which he slowly turns evil – again, this ensures me of the fact that Weeks does not know how to develop characters. Dorian goes from sort of accidently claiming the Godking’s throne in order to save his life, which I loved as a plot point, to killing innocent babies and raping underage girls in a very short period of time. Of course, it’s shown that he is conflicted about all this, but he never seems that phased or ashamed. Poor, poor execution of a character arc. Also, at the end, he suddenly turns mad, something huge which has been hinted at rather often, yet we never see his descent into madness save for the non-developmental descent into evil? Yet another superbly constructed gap, Weeks.The ending was horrifically constructed. As always, love saves us all, and Elene provides us with the ultimate self-sacrifice in order to do so. With the powerful swords our sad companionship of not-developed characters now hold, they save the world and breathe back life into the destroyed city of Black Barrow. Also, Elene created millions of red tulips to always remind Kylar of the fact that she did all that shit for him, the pure saint that she is, and Dorian the mad secretly transferred Elene’s and Kylar’s baby to Jenine, Logan Gyre’s wife, who was already pregnant with a baby of Dorian’s making. Ergo, poor Logan will now be the father of the son of a mad Godking and the son of an assassin and a goody-two-shoes, and Vi will forever remain second best to Elene in Kylar’s eyes.After all those negative points, let me return to some of the things that I did like about this last and final book of the trilogy. Vi’s powers and talents finally getting recognized, and all those women rallying behind her was awesome – finally, she gets her rightful place amongst the entire cast of characters. The magical system of the ka’karis was definitely original, and the Wolf’s role in it all was interesting; I almost wish they would have elaborated on his character (and Ezra’s) a little more. I also enjoyed how Weeks didn’t shy away from making his main protagonist all powerful, giving Kylar the strengths and talents of a godlike creature. Durzo Blint’s return was also amazing, as was the elaboration upon his history and powers.All in all, this series is a bit of a mess. I have to agree with what most people have been saying about Weeks’ writing – it’s almost like a video game or a film, in which he paints scenes and happenings with gaps in between that we as readers are requested to fill in for ourselves. For me personally, the sexism and lack of character development were two huge deal breakers as well.Would I still recommend this book or this series as a whole? Only if you realize what you’re getting into. I still had some fun reading it, focusing more on the magic and enjoying the fast pace of it all, so if it’s a quick fix you’re looking for, this book can provide it. by Brent Weeks