Review of "The Discord of Gods" by Jenn Lyons

I received an ARC of this book from Tor in exchange for an honest review.

When the first book in "A Chorus of Dragons," The Ruin of Kings, was released, somehow a mere three years ago (!), it received considerable hype and media coverage, which I think it is fair to say it didn't completely live up to. Now the fifth and final book, The Discord of Gods, is coming out to much less fanfare, despite being a stronger and more assured entry and a fitting conclusion to a satisfyingly dense epic fantasy series. Never say the world is fair, right?

A capstone book like this, which delivers the final thousand pages in a five-thousand page epic, is not for everyone, and in particular does not step far outside the bounds of what the series has already delivered. To be fair, there's not much the series hasn't tried to do yet. All four previous entries feature multiple points of view, extensive flashbacks (sometimes to millennia before the main events of the book), footnotes that sometimes try too hard to be clever but usually succeed, complicated magic, deaths, resurrections, battles, and the fate of the entire world. It would seem like there's no room left to up the stakes, and yet somehow, there is! Those who found the style and atmosphere of The Ruin of Kings to their liking will not be disappointed by any of the books in the series (personally, I thought the fourth installment, The House of Always, was the strongest, because the driving mystery and final twist felt the most intense and surprising); Lyons continues to craft messy, believable relationships between interesting characters while delivering a metric ton of world-building that often spills over into asides and footnotes. Others may have found The Ruin of Kings to be somewhat over-complicated and thought some of the twists felt a little too deus-ex-machina, while some of the mysteries and backstory felt too far removed from the story to be relevant. On the latter two fronts, the series has improved, with greater space allowing the reader the necessary knowledge to follow along and highlighting how some earlier moments of "surprise" seem in fact close to inevitable in hindsight. Having bridged the satisfied and unhappy camps after the first book, or even first two books, of the series, I find myself solidly in the former at series' end, and happy that I've followed Kihrin, Janel, Teraeth, and the rest of the gang on a wild journey through time and space.

At this point I stray into spoilers for the previous books of the series, though I'll avoid them as much as possible for this book itself. It's just hard to talk about the last book in a series without talking about the rest of the series! In each previous entry, the stakes have escalated, no mean feat given that The Ruin of Kings features a demon invasion of Quur, and The House of Always disposes of a time-traveling demon who has reset the entirety of history multiple times in a quest for Unlimited Power. The puzzle of "what are demons, and where do they come from," has been a running theme ever since Xaltorath's first appearance, both as a question about what cruelties people can bring themselves to visit upon others and as a technical puzzle within the world of "A Chorus of Dragons." The Discord of Gods finally delivers an answer to this question, and one that I found satisfying, having previously guessed at its outline as the origins of this universe's inhabitants and the Eight Guardians became clearer. As befits the final book in the series, The Discord of Gods also dispenses with the conceit of having the book be a record of past events in order to leave open the possibility of death (however impermanent it may be, though the possibility of resurrection is in serious question following the death of Death herself) for all characters. There are still enough footnotes to hint at survival for our running commentators Serena and Thurvishar, but Lyons keeps her cards close to the vest until the very end, though a genre-savvy reader may be able to spot the final gambit coming by applying their experience of other climactic epic fantasy endings. This more linear structure benefits the book, helping trim out some of the more egregious uses of point-of-view shifts and time jumps to create artificial suspense, and leaving a more focused and lean narrative in its wake. While The Discord of Gods can't quite match the locked-room ambiance of The House of Always, I found its climactic confrontation more than satisfying. These days, it seems like being able to write any ending to an epic fantasy series is itself a fact worthy of praise; fortunately, Lyons does not rest on those laurels and delivers a good ending to boot.

Four out of five stars. A strong conclusion to a sprawling, complicated, and entertaining epic fantasy series.