In today’s post, I’ll share my thoughts about the final book in Jim Stein’s trilogy.

The second book ended up with Ed and his group returning home, only to find their town being swallowed by desert which, by all means, doesn’t to seem to be natural.

Worse, all sorts of weird monsters appear from the sands, and the swirling vortex in that desert. And to make things harder, it seems to absorb strength from using Earth magic – the element Ed is strongest in.

The book starts with evacuating the town – what’s left of it, by that point – and staying ahead of the expanding desert. However, to solve the problem, a group of Ed’s friends – as well as some not-so-friends – will have to brave the desert and the strange portal inside, as well as the monsters it’s spewing out.

And they can expect little help from the gods, who are all too busy and stretched thin using their power to at least slow down the growing vortex that is, by their words, threatening to merge worlds.

The book keeps a decent pace and even though the group delves into the portal with ~40% remaining, there’s enough going on to prevent it from feeling drawn-out. Again, I don’t know the source material, the native American mythology, but the ending seems to take a lot from it. There are some twists, but also some things I’d say could be explored more, specifically the motivations of some characters and the power level of others.

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Read date: 4.9.-23.9.2021
Published: 30.5.2019
Goodreads/Amazon links (so far rated only by a few people)
My rating: 80%
Length: 331 pages (Kindle edition)

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Now, I haven’t been reading a short book for 20 days – I started it, but after the first bit, I was distracted by ther things, so I put it on hold, and then read most of the book in 4 or 5 days.