The End of All Roads (Outremer) [Paperback]

Over the last five volumes, Brenchley has laid out a large number of plot strands. Now he weaves them together in a final volume that sustains the tension almost to the end. The folded land of Surayon is folded no more, and has become a battleground for multiple warring armies, not all of them human. The different human armies are at war with one another, but face a greater enemy -- if they can recognise it in time. The central characters of the series face their own battle to protect the many people and things they love, not all of which are on the same side. Marron's battle is particularly harsh, for he has sworn, with good reason, to never again use the power of the Daughter to kill.

Even in the midst of battle, this is a character-driven story, and there's some beautiful development of character, as each of the surviving main characters is tested to the breaking point. That's "surviving", because right the way through this has not been your fluffy fantasy where only the redshirts die. There's no gratuitous gore, but that's not because the author flinches away from showing the reality of a land at war. As a result, there's genuine suspense right to the last chapter.

At the end of the battle for Surayon, there's one last conflict to resolve. The King of all Outremer has until now been an off-stage figure, shown only through what others say about him, and the effects of the magical power he wields. And the survivors from various sides have questions they would like answered about his failure to intervene in their war at an early stage. They get their answers, but answers that pose more questions.

While Brenchley answers the reader's questions, it's far from a neat and tidy ending. A satisfying one, with Julianne, Elisande and Marron pragmatic enough to be content with what they've got, but certainly not a tidy one.

As a whole then, this is a wonderful and unusual fantasy series, with this volume providing a fitting conclusion. And while romance isn't the be-all and end-all of the plot, the series is definitely one for fans of unconventional romance, so long as they don't insist on all parties getting an unambiguous Happy Ever After.

The good news is, I loved this series so much that, hours after I finished reading it, I can't stop thinking about the end. The bad news, I can't stop thinking about the end because it is ticking me off. One of the characters makes a choice that is politically unsustainable and grossly unfair, and I can't understand the character's (or the author's) logic. If the author ever writes a sequel about the consequences of the choice, though, I'd buy it -- the series really was interesting. --C.A. Sweeney

With The End of All Roads, Chaz Brenchley's distinctively literary Outremer fantasy series comes to a close, answering most if not all of the reader's questions about what has taken place over the course of the six gripping novels. As this novel opens, the Folded Land of Surayon, an "heretical" principality in the land of Outremer that has been magically hidden for forty years, is suddenly accessible to outsiders, including the armies that are converging there to destroy the land. From one side come the Knights Ransomers and the militant brotherhood of Outremer - led by a military zealot, they seek to destroy Surayon for its heretical ways. From another side come the tentatively united desert tribes of the Sharai. They seek to reclaim Surayon as a land taken from them decades earlier. Surayon has no army to speak of, and thus the death toll is writ large across the landscape.

The central characters of the Outremer novels are also in Surayon. This is a strongly character-driven series, so it is almost impossible to really describe the characters just in relation to this last of the six novels. Julianne, daughter of the King's Shadow, is now married (in name only) to both Imber, a baron of her own people, and to Hasan, the leader of her people's desert enemies. Marron, the young lad who took the mystical weapon called the Daughter into himself and became the Ghost Walker, now lies in distress after having been touched by evil. Both Marron and Hasan have been brought to Surayon in hopes of being healed by the princip of the land. The princip is the grandfather of Elisande, Julianne's loyal companion and the series' most significant tragic hero. Alongside Marron, as always, is the young but intentionally tribeless Sharai lad named Jemel. The relationship between the two young men (and there is a physical relationship involved) will be put to the test when Marron finally meets up again with Sieur Anton d'Escrivey, the knight he once served and a man with whom he established an even more controversial relationship.

It's difficult to see how everything will play out in this inevitable war that has now begun. While the Sharai and the Patrics both wish to destroy Surayon for their own reasons, they themselves are bitter enemies and could turn on one another at any time; the Sharai tribes themselves often fight amongst themselves and can only be united under a strong leader such as Hasan, but Hasan has been grievously wounded. The Ghost Walker would normally be expected to take a role in the fighting, but Marron has sworn to never kill again. On top of all this, you have a new, unnatural force entering the fray in the form of deadly 'ifrits and the fiendish ghuls they control. There is much more to this story than just the fighting, however, as the book does not end until final revelations are revealed in Ascariel by the king of Outremer himself, a king who has not been seen for the past forty years.

Generally, I thought The End of All Roads made for a pretty satisfying conclusion to a weighty and truly literary series, although I do feel as if a couple of the principal character resolution issues were a bit rushed or minimized. The Books of Outremer make up a highly unusual fantasy series, one made all the more singular by the ambiguous sexuality of the main characters. You have Julianne and her two husbands, the homosexual feelings of Marron and Jemel, the disturbing man-love relationship between Marron and Anton d'Escrivey, and poor Elisande's unrequited love for one of the boys. The distinctive atmosphere of this world is also a magical one with some similarities to what you might find in Arabian Nights. In this sixth and final book in particular, you have a number of thrilling fight scenes both between and among man and magical beast, but it really is the characters that bring this story to life. These are not heroes in the traditional sense - just the opposite, in fact, and each of them has done things I highly disapprove of - yet they remain fascinating and strongly sympathetic actors in the outré world Brenchley has created for them. The End of All Roads is a truly fitting conclusion to an extraordinary fantasy series.