I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for a good fantasy book series. The problem is that too many of them follow overly-familiar tropes. There’s the orphan who finds out they are actually royalty and must retake the throne. Or there’s the ancient evil that is returning and a plucky group of misfits have to learn to work together to defeat it. I mean, I’ll still read those stories, but in limited quantities.
But every so often a writer comes along and tries something new, a little different from what I expect. That’s the case with M.H. Thaung’s Numoeath series. The first two books (which I’ve reviewed here and here) were well-written, well-plotted, and overall fun to read. The characters were believable. No one was perfect, they all had some baggage they were carrying, made bad decisions for the right reasons, and basically behaved like real people.
The second book, Restitution, ended in a way that made me wonder what Thaung was going to do in the third book. It was somewhat of a cliffhanger, but even more so, I was thrown by an unexpected twist with the fates of several characters. Honestly, I thought the second book was dovetailing into a nice, clean ending. I was pleasantly disappointed. In fact, the ending of the second book stuck with me for several days after I finished it. I like it when an author can keep me engaged even after the last page.
The third book, Posterity, picks up immediately after the second, and expands on some of the history of this land and this world. I was hoping for that. Thaung does a wonderful job of building the world in the first two novels, but she doesn’t delve into too much of the history, leaving that for the final book. Was I happy with the payoff? Absolutely. In fact, even though she answers many questions and expands on the world-building, there’s still so much more left for her (and hopefully, us) to explore. 
Luckily, Thaung has also written some additional pieces that take place in this world. It excites me to think about world-building from a writer’s perspective. It makes me wonder how much she planned ahead of time, like, was Thaung piecing it together as she wrote? Or did she focus on the geographical area where the main story takes place, and now she’s slowly exploring the rest of the world? Either way, I find it all easy to visualize, easy to immerse myself in. It’s a world that comfortable and familiar, but still different than ours.
As far as the overall story is concerned, I think it’s good. Very good. There’s a potential coming crisis, but throughout the story questions arose about the legitimacy of the crisis. As a reader, I wasn’t sure who to believe in the story. Everyone had their agendas, some good and some bad, but even then I could understand why the characters did what they did. Basically, I understood their motivations even if I didn’t agree with them. That’s good characterization.
If I had to point to something I felt didn’t work, or could have been better, was the initial ending (there’s a nice wrap-up after the main story finishes). Not that the ending was bad or needed to be different. I just felt like it was rushed, that the final couple of chapters could have been stretched out a little bit more, a little more tension, a little more risk, and maybe a little more loss.
But hey, this is a fantasy story, fiction, so it can be whatever the author thinks is appropriate. I was still happy with how things turned out. It was a worthwhile read, a great story to immerse myself in, and as mentioned above, I continued to think about it long after the last page. If nothing else, that’s the sign of a story well-told.
RB
Perhaps the author blended serendipity, with a planned outline. One clue to that is the rushed conclusion of the book.
An excellent point, Swabby. I plan to reread the series at some point and I’ll try to do so with a different mindset.