Ah, the end of the King's Blade trilogy. I am truly saddened for it was a fantastic whirlwind of fun, and even learning! Duncan has singlehandedly taught me many new words. I mean, one or two words I don’t recognize in a book is normal, but 6 or 7 per is an experience I haven’t had since I was a child. My kindle’s dictionary feature got a full work out! My personal favorite new word? Peripatetic. (It defines my life astutely, and I get the double chuckle of posting on facebook about my “Pretty pathetic peripatetic life”. Heh… Moving right along…I was fully impressed with Mr. Duncan’s world building. The Russian, to the Spanish (and other) elements added to his fictional countries made it that much more intriguing. In the last novel we find ourselves encountering Spanish, and I can’t help but imagine the entire place of “El Dorado” as being some form of our own ancient Aztecs. Crazy were animals non-withstanding . I find myself thinking that if I could visit half the countries in the series, I would. (But not without a Blade escort, I assure you!)As to an actual review of the book itself, I enjoyed it. It was nice to finally get a view on the “snoops” since they had been mentioned in every single novel, but never really explained. The problem is… they weren’t that explained in this one either! But the information we do glean is enough to half satisfy my curiosity. I did make a note halfway through the book (kindle said 40%) saying “Finally getting to the damn meat and potatoes!” The first half of the novel took a long time (at least in my eyes) before the actual real story began. Besides that, I still had fun.I don’t believe this is the first Duncan work I’ve ever read (his name rings many bells) but it is the first since I joined this site. I’m on a deployment without access to his other novels, but I am now fully convinced they need some exploration too.Some amusing things I noticed throughout the series: 1)tKings suck.2)tEven ugly men get the girls, thanks to magic blade prowess3)tEVERYONE IS TREACHEROUS!
