When I came to the end of this novel, all I could think was this can't be the last book. It just can't be. Those words and sundry similarities ran around my brain as I tried to puzzle out if I was confused, disappointed, or missing the point altogether. According to the jacket, this is the final installment in The Fourth Realm Trilogy, but for the life of me, the story feels like it wants a fourth book.
Let me back up. The Fourth Realm Trilogy tells the story of a pair of brothers, Gabriel and Michael, who have inherited the ability to cross the barriers separating our world from five others. They are Travelers. They and those like them (prophets, holy men, and revolutionaries throughout history) can separate their Light from their physical bodies, pass through the four elemental barriers and enter one of the six realms. The realms are each defined by a dominate quality: anger in Hell, hunger in the city of hungry ghosts, innocence in the realm of animals, desire in the realm of humans, envy in the world of the half-gods, and pride in the realm of the gods. Opposing and trying to kill the Travelers is the Brethren, or Tabula, who seduce Michael into working for them and the technologically controlled world called The Vast Machine. Finally, in between, protecting the Travelers without really understanding them are the Harlequins, warriors who live outside the modern world.
It's a wonderfully complex, and sometimes frighteningly real, world which Twelve Hawks populates with authentic characters. Book one, The Traveler, was nothing short of fantastic. It takes our world and views it through a slightly Orwellian lens — as through we are all taking the first step towards 1984 — all the while blending it with the ancient mysticism of Travelers and Harlequins. The conflicts, both large and small, are excellently timed and executed. The Dark River picks up the thread and expands the story. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the first book because it focused more on the real than the mystical, in opposition to my expectations, but it certainly left me primed for the conclusion. And it is at the end I felt most conflicted.
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