Magician's End

June 10, 2013
Readers who have experienced all, or most of the preceding 29 books in Feist's best-selling epic fantasy series, will be eager to find how it all ends. But even those who have kept up religiously with the characters and plot may find the resolutionâwhich does not shut the door to more books set in the world of Midkemiaâpredictable and somewhat anticlimactic. His initial protagonists Pug, a master wizard, and Tomas, a superior warrior, are still around, and committed to fighting the forces of darkness to save their world. Pug's fate is heavily foreshadowedâas early as chapter one, he's warned that he must prepare "to sacrifice everything to save everything." That ultimate confrontation is a long time coming, and long stretches of the book pass with Pug offstage. There's not much here to distinguish this from countless other fantasy tales (the political intrigue is very dull), and the freshness that marked Feist's earlier workâincluding his ruthlessness at killing off significant playersâhas dimmed, unsurprisingly, after so long.