Outside of a Dog: Kate Nepveu's Book Log

I snuck Mercedes Lackey's conclusion to her series about dragons, Aerie, in little bits over lunch over the last couple of weeks. It has to go back to the library, so I'm sneaking out a little more time to write it up.

This book is a somewhat odd and unfortunate hard left turn in the series, introducing two additional viewpoint characters—one we'd met before, and one who appears to have been created just so we can use her eyes during the big climax—and a new threat. Okay, technically the threat is re-introduced, but since it was only mentioned during book one of this four book series, it felt like it was being introduced fresh here. The book also goes highly myffic [*] at the end, which is a jarring departure from the previous concrete things like training dragons and creating a new society.

[*] TM Nanny Ogg. "With extra myff."

Speaking of which, I'm inclined to think that if an author is going to wholesale import ancient Eyptian deities into her otherworld fantasy novel, she should either change the names completely or keep them the same. Changing one letter is just silly, and leads to decidedly mixed images: "Siris" for "Osiris" looks at first glance like the Dog Star has been spelled wrong, and "Iris" for "Isis" brings up Greek mythology instead.

All that and a sad lack of training neep. Oh well, at least I got it from the library.