Book Review: Death's Beating Heart, by Rob J. Hayes
The end of the War Eternal saga.
Podium Audio, 2023, 480 pages
Break Eternity.
Sirileth has broken the world. The ground bleeds, the seas rage, and the skies are torn asunder.
Eska will not let her daughter face the consequences alone, but can she help without donning the mantle of the Corpse Queen once more? And will the people of Ovaeris accept help from a monster?
They might not have a choice as a stable portal to the Other World is now open, and the Beating Heart of Sevorai is ever ravenous.
In this thrilling conclusion to The War Eternal, Eskara must face the consequences of her past. She will soon learn just how far she can bend before she breaks.
When I read the first book in the War Eternal series, Along the Razor's Edge, I was fully engaged by Eskara Helsene, who began the series as a mouthy fifteen-year-old child soldier who'd fought on the losing side of a war and been imprisoned in a dungeon for wizard POWs.
The series has always been narrated in the first person by an older Eskara, telling us her story from the beginning. At the end of book four, Eska was in her forties, but magically aged much older. She had children, she'd seen both empires in her long-ago war destroyed, been a queen herself, and she'd been possessed for years by a fear demon from the underworld. She'd watched gods die, and one of her daughters had just dropped a moon on the world.
Obviously, from there you can only go to armageddon, and that's what we get in the fifth and (evidently, for now) final book in the series: a war against an apocalyptic, all-consuming demon blob that's going to eat one world and then come through the portals Eska and her daughter opened to devour theirs.
This book tied everything together from the past four books: all the explorations of how magic works, the creation of the gods and the gods' creations, worlds existing on the other side of tears in reality, and of course, petty human politics. ("Human" used loosely here as the races of Ovaeris are all humanoid but not strictly what we might call human.)
Despite a fairly satisfying resolution, I must admit I didn't love the finale as much as I wanted to. I think the author came to love his characters a little too much, which meant while there were some big sacrifices, some of the ones I was expecting got punted. Sserakis, whom we first met as an exiled Lord of Sevorai and literal fear demon, has developed such a buddy-buddy relationship with Eska that he's almost cuddly at times; his constant urges to "Kill them and let us taste their fear!" regarding literally everyone they meet are practically a running gag. And the battles, well, the battles are big and spectacular and full of Eska using high magic sorcery and god-level powers to fight other Boss Monsters, and frankly they just became a little tedious at times.
This is not to say this was a bad book. It's a fitting ending to the series. It ties things up without closing much of anything off; if Rob Hayes wants to write yet another book about Eskara Helsene (or her children, or her descendants), he's left plenty of worldbuilding and plot hooks with which to do so. If this series were a little bigger, it would probably be a suitable candidate for an RPG sourcebook treatment.
But that's kind of why I finished this book feeling a little flatter about it than the previous books in the series. I like a good epic fantasy with just enough novelty to be not another Tolkien or D&D or Sanderson knock-off, and Hayes delivered, but the last book veered a little too hard into his own tropes, kind of the way Sanderson does. That was my first impression upon finishing Death's Beating Heart; perhaps my opinion of it will improve with time.
Also by Rob J. Hayes: My reviews of Along the Razor's Edge, The Lessons Never Learned, From Cold Ashes Risen, and Sins of the Mother.
My complete list of book reviews.
Podium Audio, 2023, 480 pages
Break Eternity.
Sirileth has broken the world. The ground bleeds, the seas rage, and the skies are torn asunder.
Eska will not let her daughter face the consequences alone, but can she help without donning the mantle of the Corpse Queen once more? And will the people of Ovaeris accept help from a monster?
They might not have a choice as a stable portal to the Other World is now open, and the Beating Heart of Sevorai is ever ravenous.
In this thrilling conclusion to The War Eternal, Eskara must face the consequences of her past. She will soon learn just how far she can bend before she breaks.
When I read the first book in the War Eternal series, Along the Razor's Edge, I was fully engaged by Eskara Helsene, who began the series as a mouthy fifteen-year-old child soldier who'd fought on the losing side of a war and been imprisoned in a dungeon for wizard POWs.
The series has always been narrated in the first person by an older Eskara, telling us her story from the beginning. At the end of book four, Eska was in her forties, but magically aged much older. She had children, she'd seen both empires in her long-ago war destroyed, been a queen herself, and she'd been possessed for years by a fear demon from the underworld. She'd watched gods die, and one of her daughters had just dropped a moon on the world.
Obviously, from there you can only go to armageddon, and that's what we get in the fifth and (evidently, for now) final book in the series: a war against an apocalyptic, all-consuming demon blob that's going to eat one world and then come through the portals Eska and her daughter opened to devour theirs.
This book tied everything together from the past four books: all the explorations of how magic works, the creation of the gods and the gods' creations, worlds existing on the other side of tears in reality, and of course, petty human politics. ("Human" used loosely here as the races of Ovaeris are all humanoid but not strictly what we might call human.)
Despite a fairly satisfying resolution, I must admit I didn't love the finale as much as I wanted to. I think the author came to love his characters a little too much, which meant while there were some big sacrifices, some of the ones I was expecting got punted. Sserakis, whom we first met as an exiled Lord of Sevorai and literal fear demon, has developed such a buddy-buddy relationship with Eska that he's almost cuddly at times; his constant urges to "Kill them and let us taste their fear!" regarding literally everyone they meet are practically a running gag. And the battles, well, the battles are big and spectacular and full of Eska using high magic sorcery and god-level powers to fight other Boss Monsters, and frankly they just became a little tedious at times.
This is not to say this was a bad book. It's a fitting ending to the series. It ties things up without closing much of anything off; if Rob Hayes wants to write yet another book about Eskara Helsene (or her children, or her descendants), he's left plenty of worldbuilding and plot hooks with which to do so. If this series were a little bigger, it would probably be a suitable candidate for an RPG sourcebook treatment.
But that's kind of why I finished this book feeling a little flatter about it than the previous books in the series. I like a good epic fantasy with just enough novelty to be not another Tolkien or D&D or Sanderson knock-off, and Hayes delivered, but the last book veered a little too hard into his own tropes, kind of the way Sanderson does. That was my first impression upon finishing Death's Beating Heart; perhaps my opinion of it will improve with time.
Also by Rob J. Hayes: My reviews of Along the Razor's Edge, The Lessons Never Learned, From Cold Ashes Risen, and Sins of the Mother.
My complete list of book reviews.