" The seventh book in the Emberverse Series, or 10th, if you count the "Island in the Sea of Time" series. Total indulgence pulp read for me. To be frank, this is not great writing, but its good enough to keep me interested. The series started out in the Willamette Valley in Oregon where I lived for a while, and if anything, Stirling is good on trivial setting details. The coupling of post apocalyptic and familiar territory makes this story funny and irrestiable. In this volume, Rudi and his "fellowship" have gotten the magic sword and are on their way back from Nantucket to the Kingdom of Montival, or basically the pacific northwest. A lot of the jokes are corny but Stirling knows it and has a good time poking fun with the nerdy SCA crowd that he knows will be reading the series. Stirling has reached the "Robert Jordan" effect in his story telling, meaning that, now, a good tenth to a quarter of the book is simple reteliing of the first 6 books to refamiliarize the reader to the insane amount of plot twists and character drama that has already transpired. This volume seems less annoying than the past few, which tells me that he's getting better at making the regurgitation less obvious and annoying.As always, Stirling weaves in the various linguistic references, religious trivia, and archaic weapon and armor vocabulary. Having read a lot of books this year regarding ancient Celts I have finally started recognizing the place names and myth references he casts about willy nilly. Admittedly, I have also learned a lot from having wikipedia close at hand while reading these stories, being able to quickly look up what a "shield boss" or "coite-harde" is. Improvement wise, I think this story could do without the "Liono" impersonations. Stirling has obviously watched Thundercats way too much. If the next book still has Rudi magically staring at the future through the pommel of his sword, I think I'm going to throw up. Lastly, if you have read the series up to this point, I encourage you to google search the "Church Universal Triumphant". It was very truly fascinating and kind of scary too. "
— Benjamin, 2/8/2014