The Wraiths of War (Obsidian Heart Book 3)
In the final volume of the thrilling dark fantasy trilogy, the Obsidian Heart, Alex Locke is still searching for his missing daughter. He is transported far into the future and then back into the past and the horrors of the First World War trenches, as gradually he pieces together the strange truth about the obsidian heart and his lost daughter.
A satisfying conclusion to the trilogy,
I’ve read all three books in the trilogy; the first (The Wolves of London (Obsidian Heart book 1)) – reflecting poor Alex’s experiences – had an air of confused terror. Like Alex, the reader is bounced all over the place, not really knowing what’s going on or how to deal with it (in a good way, since Alex is the one likely to get ripped apart by Things, not the reader).
Book two (The Society of Blood (Obsidian Heart Book 2)) was – for me – a bit of a hiatus, the way middle books in a series often are – although still very good.
This one is a jigsaw puzzle.
I found the first third of the book pretty hard going; given the setting, I thought it could have done with a bit more feeling: the narrative was just a bit too detached. However, after that, it picked up. Alex is learning more about how the heart operates, and closer (he hopes) to finding his kidnapped daughter. On the one hand, this reduces the terror level: Alex is figuring things out, and he’s more in control of events. On the other hand, what we lose in panic, we gain in pure intellectual pleasure.
Morris’ vision of time travel ignores a lot of the conventions used by other authors to make things less confusing. Morris just dumps the whole plate of spaghetti into your lap, sauce and all, and expects you to cope with the resulting mess. It must have taken a certain amount of authorly courage to do it. I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Alex figuring it out, and working alongside him, waiting to see if I turned out to be right. A bit like a whodunnit, the clues are all there, if you look for them.
And when you finally get to the end, there’s that happy feeling of putting the last jigsaw piece in place.
Saw the ending coming,
Couldn’t put it down,