A Song of Flight
Juliet Marillier
The Prince has gone missing, and the best candidates for the team to find him are Liobhan and Dau – but as they are romantically entangled they cannot both go on the search journey. Thus begins a novel of conflicted beliefs, truths and perspectives that culminates in the solution to the Crow Folk problem that emerged in A Dance with Fate.
I was disappointed in this novel. There were too many characters, and not enough depth for each one. I wanted to know more about Helga’s story. I wanted to know less about Galen and more about the “original three” characters of Brocc, Liobhan and Dau. Things seemed to take forever, and then I just wasn’t satisfied with the ending.
I didn’t need the Prince’s storyline. Brocc could have done it equally well. Also, why did Brocc suddenly decide to throw caution to the wind? I understand his love for Niamh clouds a lot of his judgement but is he truely so clueless as to his own powers? He seriously has no other options, and can’t walk in the Otherworld?
Liobhan, despite really being my favourate character in this trilogy, didn’t really show up. I didn’t see a completion of her character development. I definitely saw a deepening of the love she had for and of Dau, but that was mainly covered in The Harp of Kings. I also didn’t see much of a display of her warrior skills, which was something I enjoyed in earlier novels in the trilogy as it wasn’t an aspect of the first set of novels.
I will of course go back and reread these – they are Juliet Marillier afterall – but I believe that the Blackthorn and Grimm trilogy is superior to the Warrior Bard novels. 5 stars, but I was so sad about the ending š Oh! And I was generously sent two copies of this by Pan Macmillan, but neither arrived, so I bought it for myself as an early Christmas present.
