Knight of Stars (God Fragments #3) ★★★★☆

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Title: Knight of Stars
Series: God Fragments #3
Author: Tom Lloyd
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 472
Words: 128K

Synopsis:

The Cards have taken a small, easy job for Toil. All they have to do is bust into a small headquarters which owes a banking consortium some money and hold the place until the banking soldiers can establish control. It is easy as predicted and now everyone can relax in a city made up of islands. Of course, it is also Teshen's old stomping grounds (he's the titular Knight of Stars) and back in the day he was a big to do. He was exiled after a failed coup and him coming back is not something people want.

The islands are also home to the lands most powerful mages, which gives the islands their name, Mage Island (how original huh?). Toil wants to find a source of god fragment bullets as the stunts that were pulled in the previous book means that the main source of god fragments won't be supplying her city. To accomplish this she dangles the marked Cards (those who all got a leaf mark from the magical tree construct) in front of the mages. She also takes up a contract with another mage to have her Marked Cards work on a duegar artifact.

The magical tree artifact from the previous book turned out to be a plug that the duegar used to seal a lot of magic out of the world. With the Cards having activated it, more magic is now available in the world. Do they learn their lesson though? Of course not. They proceed on their merry way and get a bunch of the lesser mages marked and powered up with this new artifact and release even MORE magic. Which has a lot of unintended consequnces. Like stirring up a double handful of the monsters that eat magic from the first book.

After a humongous battle in which they wipe out the monsters but the island is pretty much wiped out too, the Cards are forced to leave the Island as the inhabitants all want to kill them. They take several of the marked mages to be new Cards and return to Toil's home city.

My Thoughts:

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Not as much as the first book but I think that one, with Lynx as the main character, is simply going to be the high point of the series. I saw on devilreads that Lloyd stated there will be one more book in this series. I'm good with that too. Sometimes a series needs to just tell one story and then be done. I'm glad Lloyd has chosen that route instead of dragging this out forever, even if I am sad that he's not going to be writing more about Lynx.

Each of the books' titles has referred to one specific character within the Cards. First we had Lynx, then Toil and now Teshen. Sadly, neither of the latter hold a candle to Lynx. I'm glad that Toil and Lynx have hooked up simply because it means we get to hear more about Lynx than if he was just one of the main named characters.

I liked that the setting was very different from the previous 2 books. Both of those dealt with Duegar underground areas, while this was out in broad daylight on some tropical like islands. Of course, that doesn't stop the monsters from being totally bad-ass and destroying everything they can. Lloyd can write some seriously awesome monster fight scenes. The Cards are as Black Company-lite as ever and come across as drunk, curmudgeonly and greedy, just like they are. It is fun to be honest.

The reason this gets 4 stars and not 4.5 or 5 is because Lloyd flirts with the idea of same-sex relationships without actually inserting it into the story. That is part of why I'm glad he's ending this when he is. I'm a touch concerned that he'll cross the line and I'll have to stop reading him. This way I can finish the series and he can do whatever the frell he wants to in other stories and both of us, one as writer and one as reader, are happy.

★★★★☆

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