The end of the bestselling Dark Souls trilogy has finally come to eager fans that dying to see how the story all shakes out. The Book of Life picks right up where the last book left off with the chase for the famed Ashmole manuscript. However much like the last novel, this book suffers from the same fairly significant tonal shift that affected the previous one.
It is important to note that these tonal shifts were not necessarily a bad thing, they were just distinctly different from the books before it. For instance, in the second novel when the reader was looking for more of the same excitement and characters from the first novel. The two main characters time traveled and spent the entire novel in Victorian England. While this was a great novel and further blend the series interesting mix of actual history and the supernatural it left the second book feeling a bit like a five hundred and ninety-two-page interlude. Also in this book the main character Diane’s powers undergo a further “clarification” which just ends with them seeming like a totally different set of powers.
Alone all of these books stand up well, but when placed together as a series it is clear to see that this was the author, Deborah Harkness’, first time doing this. That being said, the last book was just as thrilling and engaging as the rest in series while also providing the readers with enough closure so they felt satisfied. Also, it left just enough of the back door open in case Harkness ever wanted to return to the series. Solid writing and answers to big questions are abound in this final novel that is open enough to first time readers of the series, but long time readers will just have to live with the fact that this is just a series of books that does not feel like a series.
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