The Margrave (Relic Master, #4) By Catherine Fisher
The fourth installment in the Relic Master quartet!
Galen and Raffi's quest has brought them to the Pits of Maar. There, below the surface of the world, in the deepest darkness, a most evil thing is waiting for them to come.
The Margrave (Relic Master, #4)
Catherine Fisher ß 9 Download
Galen, Raffi, Carys, and the Seqoi are going after the Margrave. He is the evil in the world that is causing the unfinished land to grow. He is the creator of the Watch and the death of the Order. The Margrave must die. Although it is Galen’s quest, will he be able to accomplish it? It is against his beliefs to kill.
This was a beautiful and wondrous end to this series but also unfulfilling at the same time.
Raffi, Galen, and even Carys are forced to take a hard look at their belief and decide if they actually still believe them. Raffi looks evil right in the face and discovers that even evil things are not all bad. Even evil things have qualities that will redeem them and make them worth saving. Carys gets to take a good long look at the Watch. While the Watch has perpetrated some very bad things, they have made her the strong person she is today. Also just because the Watch itself is evil, the people in the Watch, given the chance to change, often choose to. Finally Galen learns he has never had as much faith as he believed that he did.
We meet a couple new characters that help to bring about some change. We get to learn about the Owls and how they work together with the Seqoi. Raffi also discovers much about the Makers that was never known before.
The thing that makes this book so cool is the very large amount of the story time that is spent on the POV of the Margrave. We get to hear his story from his mouth. It was very eye opening and provides an alternative perspective on the Makers. I really enjoyed the depth that this added to the story.
Unfortunately it is kind of unsatisfying because a key element of the story, the Makers returning, never happens. I think Fisher leaves the story like this on purpose. For one thing this story isn’t about the Makers. It is about the civilization that grew out of what the makers left behind. If the makers were to have returned it would have changed the entire focus and themes of the books. The other thing I was unsatisfied about was the relics. Fisher was never able to explain well enough to me how these people were able to manipulate electronics with their minds.
On a side note Dan Bittner, the narrator, is truly amazing to listen to. His character voices seriously sounds like a full cast of actors reading it. Amazing!!
PG - Violence. Death. English This is my favorite book out of them all! English This book was action packed. It was a great finish to the Relic Master series English This really needed to be the second book in the series, rather than the fourth. It's taken so long to feel any character growth, and this, as a finale, is pretty underwhelming for a 4 book series. This was basically a story of a once-technologically advanced society that decayed into medieval times + magic + kajits (from Elder Scrolls). Seems interesting, right? But nothing was explored in depth, not the world and certainly not the characters. So much potential washed down the drain. English This quartet ended as expected but left me wondering if there is more to the story. I'd like to think so because otherwise, the ending seems a little quick considering there are unanswered questions regarding the overall plot-line. Sure the immediate concerns have been addressed but not the long-term ones. I'd like to see those explored and resolved. English
The Relic Master/Book of the Crow series ends well, mainly because the arch-bad-guy gets quite a bit of on-stage time; a rarity in high fantasy. It's interesting to get a glimpse of his motivations and character. An alternative (eye-witness) version of events in the era of the Makers is presented - but how reliable is it? In fact it seems much more believable than the legends that have been handed down by the Order for many generations. This change of perspective on events reminds me of what happens multiple times in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books, where different view points and revelations about the past alter the reader's views on what has been going on, making everything much less black & white. Catherine Fisher does not reach the level of sophistication LeGuin achieves, but it adds a lot of depth to a world that is already realised in greater detail than many of her earlier efforts. Further revelations about the Sekoi also contribute to this.
The denouement is rather predictable in general terms and the aftermath is glossed over, which is a shame, because the aftermath is rarely examined in quest style stories even though it often presents challenges to the characters that are different and possibly more demanding than those of the quest itself. The state of the world at the end of many quests is dire and frequently a power-vacuum prevails. What happens then? The Scouring of the Shire in The Return of the King is the only example that springs to mind of trying to deal with this in a serious way. Since the entire primary plotline of the second book in this series is redundant, getting rid of it and having a book that follows on from the situation at the end of this book would have been much more interesting, with great opportunity for further character development in the two young protagonists.
Over all, this is one of Fisher's better series but none of the books individually is a match for her best books, such as The Oracle and Incarceron. English I just miss reading this, It was a fantastic adventure story when I first read this years ago. English The Margrave is the fourth and final book of Catherine Fisher’s RELIC MASTER. The series as a whole is a bit thin on worldbuilding, emotional depth, and secondary characterization, but save for a minor drop-off in book two, it is a smoothly exciting read and The Margrave brings it to a satisfyingly strong conclusion.
As in the previous books, the story is split between Raffi’s experiences and Carys’. It begins with a bang as Carys is captured by the Watch at the very beginning. She is quickly brought to the attention of two higher-ups, the castellan Maris Scala and her lover Quist. The two of them decide to escort Carys to the Pits of Maar, the darkest center of the Watch where the Margrave is rumored to live and command the brutal group. Galen, Raffi, and the Sekoi... Read More:
http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi... English We now come to the last leg of Raffi and Galen's journey: the Pits of Maar where the Margrave, the leader of the deadly Watch, resides. In Maar lies a creature of the most evil and the bane of the Order. Will our two keepers be able to defeat the darkness, or will their light be snuffed out?
Plot
To be honest, the plot in the Relic Master series has been done before. Members of a resistance infiltrate some government or militia to destroy the leader, who is actually a monster or something. Still, I think Fisher handled a common plot very well. She spun it into her own tale and made it great. There are things about certain parts of the plot, like characters motives, that I question and don’t feel was written the best, but the book isn’t full of tropes and overdone clichés.
Writing
The writing, both in The Margrave and the other three books was very well done. Each book had a bit trouble getting to the good part, but once it hit it was smooth sailing from there. The descriptions that were given were easy to imagine, which is good because I often have trouble with this. The best part of the writing was with scenes that were high intensity. I could feel the tension on each page. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about the writing in this series.
Characters
And thus, at the end of the series, I still can barely tolerate Raffi. He was a weak, clumsy, oaf of a character who didn’t have the same amount of characterization that could have been found in Carys’ pinkie. Raffi wasn’t well-written at all, and I cared about the other characters a lot more than him.
Speaking of the other characters, they seem to play second banana to our dull protagonist. The previous books focused quite a lot on Carys, Galen, and the Sekoi, in that order. In The Margrave they are in the shadow of Raffi. Seeing as how I’ve made it known that I enjoy them more than Raffi, one can imagine my disappointment. They were wonderful characters and I loved them to pieces.
Things I Liked
I can’t really think of anything I liked in The Margrave. The ending ruined everything that I could have potentially enjoyed about the book. I suppose I’m happy my favorite characters didn’t die.
Things I Didn't Like
The ending. It was terrible. The ending just encapsulated on of the most aggravating things about this series as a whole: the lack of explanations. All through the books the reader has had to figure out, on their own, what the characters were talking about with regards to information there was no way we could possibly know. And then, when I finally think things are going to be explained, the book ends! I literally looked at the ending and asked “That was it?” out loud. The last quarter of The Margrave was but a fizzle when it honestly could have been a bang.
Just the way things are left open in the end was enough to knock and entire star from the book. You can’t give the reader multiple threads of information and then leave them untied. This just leads to frustrated readers and an author who took the easy way out because they probably didn’t have an explanation.
Diversity
For diversity, both in the series as a whole and this book, we have Carys, an amazing girl who would have made a much better protagonist than the one we get. There are multiple women in strong roles, like the new leader of Anara being a girl. There is a character with dwarfism, and I don’t think he’s too terrible of a character. He’s rather funny, and I liked him.
There wasn’t any racial diversity that I could see. I’m pretty sure everybody was supposed to be white. However, I saw each character as races other than white. Raffi is a dark-skinned black boy with dreads. Carys is an East Asian girl. Galen is Native American. Tallis is black as well. It’s sad that the book is nowhere near diverse as my imagination, though.
Absolutely no diversity in sexualities or genders. What a shame.
Overall
The Margrave was, in all honesty, a letdown. I was so anxious to see how Fisher would wrap up her series. Not very well, is the answer to that question. I literally went online to see if there was a fifth book in the Relic Master series because surely this couldn’t be it? Alas, it is. If my disappointment in this series shows in this review: good.
Although I’m sad I didn’t like the last book, I thank Ms. Catherine Fisher for allowing me to explore the wonderful world of Anara.
Here is a link to my notes. English
This fourth and final book in the tetralogy The Book of the Crow, again splits view points between Raffi and Carys, in more or less parallel events that lead to a conclusion as unsurprising as a stomachache after Trick or Treat. This series continues to a conclusion without ever really building a complete world picture, or giving us a reason for the existence of the Makers, a group of people revered as gods by the humans of the world. The author at one point alluded to the fact that the people are lost colonists, but nothing more is really said, although there are points which could have been strongly built on English