Maker's Curse

March 15, 2020
Wrapping up the Millennium's Rule fantasy series (Successor's Promise, 2017, etc.), although the outcome dangles just enough for sequels. Again, the narrative alternates between two points of view. Sorcerer Rielle the Maker, with her uniquely potent ability to create new magic, has been tasked by the Restorers to fill "dead" worlds with new magic. But when the Restorers' leader, Baluka, asks her to take sides in an alarming dispute between two competing worlds, she refuses. Meanwhile, Tyen, one of the most powerful sorcerers in existence, needs to research ways to defeat the magic-powered war machines that are fast becoming a major problem among the many worlds linked by magical pathways. Hoping to take charge of the failing, hidebound school on his magic-depleted home world, he asks Rielle to flood the world with new magic. All this trundles along, preceded by detailed recaps of and updates to prior events and interspersed with Rielle's musings or Tyen's bureaucratic wrangles. Finally, the story gets going when the sorcerer Dahli, once a ruthless opponent, now a trusty ally--maybe--shows up to report overwhelming attacks by a new generation of magic robots: onslaughts that leave entire worlds empty of humans, depleted of magic, and dedicated solely to manufacturing new robot hordes. Renegade sorcerers are working for whomever's directing them. Worse, young Zeke, a talented machine designer and Tyen's prot�g�, has been captured and enslaved. Yet the plot still tends to meander around minor characters of faint charm and scant importance to the main thread. And the existential threat never really persuades--the good guys just seem too confident, the machines aren't particularly baleful, the villains lack incentive. So the conclusion boils up nicely yet doesn't fully deliver on the potential displayed in the earlier books. An agreeable conclusion to a worthy but not outstanding series.

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