by Sara Douglass
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Product Description
Book Five of the Wayfarer Redemption
The Star Gate is destroyed and the Star Dance is dead. Icarii Enchanters, gods, and humans alike are helpless as the TimeKeeper Demons lay waste to Tencendor.
There must be hope left, but no one knows where to find it. Death lurks in every twist of the Maze, but only those who have the courage to endure death can learn the secrets of the ancient enemy.
Caelum SunSoar and his parents know that the only way is to discover the ancient secrets that lay trapped in the mountain Star Finger, and Faraday, martyred heroine, grows ever fearful -- and ever bitter. Must she lose everything to the land?
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 More like a 2.5, 2008-09-04
Like other readers, I have hung on and continued to read this series with a mixture of guilty pleasure, disgust, and annoyance. The stories are engaging enough, otherwise people wouldn't be reading the 5th book in a 6 book series, so I have to say, kudos to Douglass for that.
SPOILER ALERT:
I was so over Faraday after the first 3 books and was glad when she was no longer interfering in the story I wanted to read. But Faraday is much more likable in Pilgrim. However, this is done at the expense of Axis and Azhure. I'm not sure why Douglass was unable to balance the cast of major characters. It would have been far preferable to me if Axis and Azhure didn't even appear in these three books at all. Faraday is annoying in her repeated inner dialogue about why she can't love Drago. It gets old being beaten over the head with things, but Douglass is ever one to do this.
The absolute worst part about this book is the brutality. I can handle brutality when it serves a greater purpose in the story. I can handle gruesome details. However, Douglass goes WAY WAY over the top in this book and lost me as a future reader of any other of her works. I will finish this series because I started them, but I will NEVER read another book she writes, lest I have to suffer through details of rapes and people eating their own entrails. Douglass was going for shock value, I guess, but it falls flat and simply makes me wonder if she has a warped mind.
Some of the battles in this book are simply dumb. At one point an army of over a billion animals descends upon tens of thousands of the residents of Carlon. I'm sorry, but a billion of ANYTHING can quickly overtake even a million people. And yet, Drago is able to save the people anyway. Details like that are grating and annoying.
As is Faraday's use of the "F" word (talk about breaking the magic) and her use of the well known "absolute power corrupts absolutely quote." I didn't realize Faraday was a fan of The Prince.
The TimeKeeper Demons got old, as did StarLaughter and the rest of that group. After awhile I felt like yawning. Douglass didn't know what to do with the Hawkchilds, although they could have been rather terrifying. Instead she decided to gross everyone out by describing self mutilation and the rape of WolfStar. Yes, the rape of WolfStar. I would really like to know why Douglass felt the need to go there. It served NO purpose of any kind, and I think all would agree.
The high points of this book were Drago, Urbeth, and Faraday for me. Also the reappearance of Belaguez. That was nice. I'm glad I'm almost done with these books!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Carpe Douglass: Seize the plot twist, 2007-08-16
Sara Douglass has taken her own spin on the plot twist, the character twist (wherein a character previously assumed to be the reincarnation of Sliced Bread is discovered to actually be secretly eeeevil, while characters everyone reviles as a cross between Osama bin Laden and a child molester are revealed to be the salvations of man-, bird-, and tree-kind) and moved it beyond perfection into predictability. Rest assured, if you are introduced to a character who appears to be a pretty decent guy, that he will eventually turn out to kick puppies or something. On the other hand, previously kickass members of the Hot Cover Art Girls With Swords and Halter Tops Club are now reduced to vapid, simpering sidekicks who sigh a lot (I'm looking at you, Azhure and Zenith). And then Faraday - who from Day 1 has been the most boringly consistent character of all, with her interminable sulky, self righteous martyr complex - drops the F-bomb out of nowhere, and you know you're in the presence of a master. Still, after the first 87 times the monster rips off his mask to reveal he's really kindly old Mr. MacGregor, you get the point.
But then, Douglass has never been accused of being too subtle. She will take a horse and beat it, not only 'til it's dead, but long past its expiration date. Take Zenith, who's really starting to tick me off. See, Zenith and her grandfather StarDrifter are in love, which is OK because they're both SunSoars, which is like being a Bush in that you rule the world and you can pretend things like the Constitution don't exist, much less apply to you. (Does that make WolfStar Karl Rove?) Except Zenith is all angsty over the fact that she wants to boink granddad, and so she spends the entire book agonizing over it. Seriously. Every. Single. Time we cut to Zenith, that's what she's doing. She serves absolutely no other purpose in this book except to conduct a tortured inner dialogue: "But I love him! But it's gross! But he's so hot! But it's naughty!" Fish or cut bait, honey.
But you know, detailing everything wrong with a Sara Douglass novel is a little mean, plus way too easy - like shooting fish in a barrel. The truth is, I've hung in for 5 books so far, and am planning on the 6th, so obviously she's doing something right. I'll admit that the sheer soap-opery melodrama is, in its own way, a delightfully guilty pleasure. I also like the fact that, for the most part, Douglass has managed to maintain a level of coherence and internal continuity in an astonishingly complicated and twisting series of books; any surprises she reveals about events that occurred in the first three books generally hold up on further inspection. This makes for a fairly longish series that works as well on the fifth book as it did in the first, quite an accomplishment these days.
So these eeeevil demons have crashed through the Star Gate and rendered all of Tencendor's likely heroes useless. The Enchanters are disenchanted, the StarMan is starless, and the StarSon is... Wait, who's the StarSon again? That distinction plays a huge role here, as professional underdog Drago leads a ragtag band of humans to Save the World. Trite, but true. Anyway, a lot of the book is spent describing the horrors that the Demons visit upon Tencendor, and the utter helplessness of most of the population. There's less of action here (save for the fleeing) than of revelations. Such is the fate of the middle book of the trilogy. So we get more on the mysterious 'craft' that crash landed millennia ago; the origins of the various species of Tencendor (except the Avar - I want their story!); the whole StarMan/StarSon controversy; the potential power of the Acharites, &c. All to set up the final book, really, although the ending of "Pilgrim" is delightfully cliffhangerish.
So yes, I mock, but at the end of the day I really do get a kick out of these books. I wish to God Douglass were a more consistent writer, or at least had a decent editor, but I don't look a gift novel in the mouth. "Pilgrim" is an enjoyable, entertaining continuation of the Wayfarer Redemption series.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Can't miss, 2007-08-06
The saga continues...riveting story line and Sara Douglass just keeps you turning page after page. So much action, you can't put it down.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Just as good as the rest, 2007-03-21
An awesome read, you really get to know these charachters, people have said bad things I know, but if you can really get into a story and not judge it for more then what it is; a great story, you will truly love this series.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 The downward spiral continues, 2007-03-17
The ties that binded this mythology together begin to unravel. As I enjoyed the first three, it is a sad thing to have to say, but the characters leave much to be desired, the story is splintered, and the brutality is often unnecessarily gruesome.
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