END SPOILER

Mina. The name just makes me shudder to see in print, as does the phrase "The One God." They are repeated to such a degree that I daresay there must have been tens of thousands of these references in the series. In the third book, except for a few other words, it is mostly Mina and "The One God," ad nauseam.

I can tell you that I immediately did not like Mina. She was one-dimensional and stupid and that is not the kind of character you want to carry through an entire series, especially one longer than any written previously by Weis & Hickman. 500 pages of Mina. Then 600 pages. Then 600 more pages. 1,700 pages of Mina. Mina. Mina. Mina. The One God. The One God. The One God. Oh, God - any God - make it stop!

Like some kind of supreme torture, it never ends. How everyone loves Mina. How they do it all for Mina. MINI-SPOILER: How the Elven king loves and then dies for Mina. How everyone is affected by Mina; entire nations and races of people. All for Mina.

How dumb are these people? No one can see the writing on the wall even after dealing with all this God-crap before, only 50 years earlier? The elves live forever and they seem more idiotic than anyone!

I mean c'mon, there was not one character who could not immediately sniff out how evil Mina was? I knew it. And I really didn't feel like spending the next 1,700 pages dealing with how obtuse everyone on this entire planet had become.

Mina is nothing more than a slave to this One God. Nothing more than a device and a servant. She is nothing. She does not fear. She does not love. She does not really have any emotions at all. YAWN. Wake me when it's over.

Ultimately, before the book was even finished, I wanted her to die. I wanted to be rid of Mina and have them focus on another character, someone with a little ...something! Anything! An in-grown toenail! Whatever it takes so I was not falling asleep. Someone who was not a boring, soul-less character who made me skip entire passages out of utter boredom.

The book ends on a cliffhanger, making me thankful that I did not read these when they were published in 2001. Waiting for the next crappy book would have added insult to injury. At least now I could go on to the next and flip through it and try to get out of the Mina-hell faster.