Of importance is the fact that we lose one major character as a sacrifice to eliminate the snow, and gain a new one who makes life very complicated for Arthur and Guinevere: Lancelot du Lac. The love triangle to end all love triangles is now complete.
In order to buy some time Guinevere sends Lancelot off to protect her son. As the child of a God, he has physically and mentally grown at a phenomenal rate, but is as emotionally unready for the world as an infant. When he believes Guinevere has rejected him he flees to his father, bearing with him what he hopes will be the gift to win his acceptance, an ancient knife of the dwarfs that has the potential to send the user's soul completely out of time.
This is actually the beginning of The Darkest Road, the third book in the trilogy, where of course all comes to an end. The road referred to in the title is not just another way of saying that it's darkest before the dawn, but is in reference to the journey into the self that so many have to take to find their true nature.
For Guinevere and Rakoth's son Darien this is a harder trip than what most of us have to deal with. He has gone in search of his father to seek acceptance because he feels rejected by good, when his mother's refuses to help him choose between the two sides. In the end it is that gift of freedom of choice that decides his fate.
It has always been within his power to decide who and what he is, and not seek for his identity in the favour of others. Guinevere had been right all along to allow his birth and to give him that gift. For it is by his hand that the evil that is Rakoth is destroyed and sent out of time.
Before Darien's birth Rakoth was not tied to the world, and existed outside of the cycles of birth and death. But when Darien was born it tied him to existence. The knife that his son gave Rakoth was cursed so that when a person kills with hate in his heart, his soul is cast forever out of time. When Darien dies by the knife at the hands of Rakoth, he succeeds in ending his threat forever.
Article comments
1 - johnboy
Interesting you didn't draw similarities with the Silmarillion.
I read the books thinking all the way how stylistically similar I thought they were.
Only when I got to the end did I notice Kay's involvement.
OK so I prefer to know the work before i check out the author.