An Echo of Things to Come by James Islington
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This author just made it to my total fanboy heart. I'm rarely this excited about new anything. I mean, I'm usually excited to some degree or another, but I usually reserve this kind of energy for authors I know and have trusted for years.

Welcome to my heart, Mr. Islington. :)

These characters are absolutely wonderful, from the great reveal at the end of the last book to the full-out disclosure and development of a certain beast character in this one. I love them all. It's true. Every single step of this story has been a real delight.

There's lots of magic, time-stopping fights, energy-draining epicness, an enormous amount of history and strife and memory-crunching reveals and even gods.

But more than that, the story is twisted. The magic is used almost like a hard SF tale, with complicated moving parts and some of the old uses are truly horrific. No spoilers, but once I started learning all about the barrier and the other land and so much of the high-magic-technology, I've been bouncing in my seat.

I wouldn't be surprised if these books didn't become as immortal as some of its main characters. :)

Joyfully, I have no issues with the directions taken in the middle plots. It was all fun and a delight to run in, even if it didn't propel the main story sequence in big parts. I was invested.

But most importantly, this is definitely going up there as some of my absolute favorite epic-fantasy series. You know, the ones with huge page counts, enough magic to choke nations, and a strife that spans millennia.

I'm a SUCKER for any book that goes BIG! Not just word count, but BIG IDEAS. :)

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