Book Review: Sins of the Mother, by Rob J. Hayes
Book four of The War Eternal: Eskara is now an old woman and her daughter wants to destroy the world.
Self-published, 2022, 484 pages
In her darklight the world will burn.
Eskara Helsene is missing. She left her queendom, her friends, her children, even her own name behind. No one has seen the Corpse Queen for a decade.
Someone is murdering Sourcerers, forcing them to reject their magic and opening scars in reality, and monsters from the Other World are pouring through.
When an old acquaintance turns up out of the blue, Eska has no choice but to investigate the murders and the holes in reality. Can she stop the murderer before the entire world is consumed? And will the conflict reveal her true nature?
The War Eternal is epic fantasy candy. It's all the epic fantasy goodness you want without pretending to be artsy, literary, or genre-redefining, but it's solid, well plotted, and not Young Adult despite Eskara beginning the series as a teenager.
Throughout the series, Eskara has been narrating her life's story in hindsight, from the perspective of her older, more jaded self. Now we have finally reached that older, jaded person. Eskara is in her 40s, but looks and feels even older thanks to chronomancy. Physically, she's an old woman. She's been imprisoned in an underground pit, come back from the dead, been possessed by a supernatural incarnation of fear, spent months being tortured in a dungeon, given birth twice, fought gods, and ruled a little empire of her own as queen.
When Sins of the Mother opens, she's living under an assumed name as a village wise woman. She's run away from her throne, and none of her neighbors know she is the legendary "Corpse Queen." Of course this doesn't last; her friends come looking for her, because her daughter has gone missing and apparently has started a doomsday cult.
Two stories run in parallel here; Eskara narrating her current quest, in which she tracks down her errant daughter, and narrating the past ten years and how she went from renegade to queen to living incognito as a hermit.
The current quest has the feeling of one last hurrah, as Eska allies with old friends and new frenemies. We know it's going to end epically and in tragedy. We also see Eska becoming more vulnerable, more wise, as all her past mistakes and terrible deeds come back to haunt her. Her body and soul are both scarred, she has learned to love as fiercely as she ever learned to hate, and yet she's still the hot-tempered, brash, bad-ass she's always been. She is still capable of wrecking shit just because someone looked at her funny.
I have been impressed throughout the series with Rob Hayes's worldbuilding, as he continues to build up his cosmology and magic system in a methodical, logical way, and he keeps scaling this up. He also ties a lot of threads together, some of which were begun the first book. There is a lot of impressive long-term plotting. Sins of the Mother does not disappoint; this isn't just another boss-fight with Eskara showing off her sorcery. The ending is a truly epic climax, and unlike the previous book, it ends on something of a cliffhanger, like the first two books.
Fifth book and final book remaining!
Also by Rob J. Hayes: My reviews of Along the Razor's Edge, The Lessons Never Learned, and From Cold Ashes Risen.
My complete list of book reviews.
Self-published, 2022, 484 pages
In her darklight the world will burn.
Eskara Helsene is missing. She left her queendom, her friends, her children, even her own name behind. No one has seen the Corpse Queen for a decade.
Someone is murdering Sourcerers, forcing them to reject their magic and opening scars in reality, and monsters from the Other World are pouring through.
When an old acquaintance turns up out of the blue, Eska has no choice but to investigate the murders and the holes in reality. Can she stop the murderer before the entire world is consumed? And will the conflict reveal her true nature?
The War Eternal is epic fantasy candy. It's all the epic fantasy goodness you want without pretending to be artsy, literary, or genre-redefining, but it's solid, well plotted, and not Young Adult despite Eskara beginning the series as a teenager.
Throughout the series, Eskara has been narrating her life's story in hindsight, from the perspective of her older, more jaded self. Now we have finally reached that older, jaded person. Eskara is in her 40s, but looks and feels even older thanks to chronomancy. Physically, she's an old woman. She's been imprisoned in an underground pit, come back from the dead, been possessed by a supernatural incarnation of fear, spent months being tortured in a dungeon, given birth twice, fought gods, and ruled a little empire of her own as queen.
When Sins of the Mother opens, she's living under an assumed name as a village wise woman. She's run away from her throne, and none of her neighbors know she is the legendary "Corpse Queen." Of course this doesn't last; her friends come looking for her, because her daughter has gone missing and apparently has started a doomsday cult.
Two stories run in parallel here; Eskara narrating her current quest, in which she tracks down her errant daughter, and narrating the past ten years and how she went from renegade to queen to living incognito as a hermit.
The current quest has the feeling of one last hurrah, as Eska allies with old friends and new frenemies. We know it's going to end epically and in tragedy. We also see Eska becoming more vulnerable, more wise, as all her past mistakes and terrible deeds come back to haunt her. Her body and soul are both scarred, she has learned to love as fiercely as she ever learned to hate, and yet she's still the hot-tempered, brash, bad-ass she's always been. She is still capable of wrecking shit just because someone looked at her funny.
I have been impressed throughout the series with Rob Hayes's worldbuilding, as he continues to build up his cosmology and magic system in a methodical, logical way, and he keeps scaling this up. He also ties a lot of threads together, some of which were begun the first book. There is a lot of impressive long-term plotting. Sins of the Mother does not disappoint; this isn't just another boss-fight with Eskara showing off her sorcery. The ending is a truly epic climax, and unlike the previous book, it ends on something of a cliffhanger, like the first two books.
Fifth book and final book remaining!
Also by Rob J. Hayes: My reviews of Along the Razor's Edge, The Lessons Never Learned, and From Cold Ashes Risen.
My complete list of book reviews.