The Black Star (The Cycle of Arawn)

The Black Star is, in my opinion, the best book of The Cycle of Arawn. Dante and Blays are still separated at the beginning of the book. After spending several years grieving they each have more or less settled into pursuing their own projects. Blays has decided he can be of most use in trying to bring down the oppressive government of Gask. Dante has begun to get serious about preparing for his future duties as the leader of Narashtovik.Blays still hates Dante because he holds Dante responsible for the death of Lira in the war that ended the previous book, The Great Rift. Dante is looking for Blays, who he hasn’t seen in several years at this point. Dante is also off to investigate mysterious lights in the night sky over the Woduns mountain range on behalf of the Citadel. So he has two projects going at once.A mysterious woman appears who claims to be able to find Blays. In return, she wants a job spying for the Citadel. She actually leads Dante to Blays. Dante confronts Blays at a most inauspicious time, in the castle of their old enemy, King Moddegan of Gask, just when Blays is trying to conclude a deal that he intends to bring down Moddegan’s government. Blays runs away, all the way to Pocket Cove, with Dante in hot pursuit. Blays (barely) persuades the people of the Pocket to let him in, but they refuse to let Dante come in after him.Eventually, Dante returns to Narashtovik to his other tasks. Through a lot of painstaking research, Dante learns that the lights in the sky he has been investigating signal the return of an object known as Cellen, or the Black Stark, a potent magical object that appears only once every thousand years but is supposed to possess immense power. Dante returns to the Woduns with a small party to see if he can find this Cellen.In Pocket Cove, Blays begins the study of the nether, under the tutelage of Minn, one of the women of the pocket. When, after a long learning process, Blays has gotten somewhat proficient with the nether, Minn learns from her uncle that her cousin has been kidnapped and threatened with death. Minn and Blays go to try to save him. In the process, they learn that the ransom demanded for the cousin was a rare book with information about Cellen. The kidnapper was trying to get it for King Moddegan, who wants Cellen for his own purposes.Meanwhile, Dante and his party, in the land of Weslee on the far side of the Woduns, have discovered another ruler who wants Cellen specifically to destroy Narashtovik, which he blames for a catastrophe in his country several thousand years ago.Keeping Cellen away from both the Minister and Moddegan suddenly becomes a very important goal, more important than any use Dante may have thought to make of the Black Star on his own behalf. Eventually, he and Blays have to join forces again to remove the Black Star from the Minister’s possession before he can use it.

Awesome wrap up for the trilogy. I personally think the Great Rift was better in terms of a buddy-cop feel between the Dante and Blays, but this book has them seperated for the bulk of the story and for the first time you experience the world through Blays and he's just hilarious. You also see that without his not so subtle tempering of Dante that he really is like borderline psychotic and doesnt value much above his own needs (made even better by the fact that he's touted as the best healer in the known world, and will straight up let someone bleed to death from a gut wound if saving them doesnt help him.)Great read. Couldn't put it down. Ill probably buy the other Cycle of titles in a collection some time next month.

Blays and Dante have split up, their friendship over with the death of Blays' love, Lira.Having successfully avoided Dante for five years, Blays is still working to bring down the king, preferably without killing him, thank you.In the meantime, Dante has a network of spies all over the known land, searching for Blays.Oh, and there's this black star set to make its once a millennium appearance any time now.Yes they have to save the world again, it's what they do. And they do it so well!Really love this series and I highly recommend it to all the adventurers out there, and us wannabes too.The only con I have is the author's incessant use of the word 'couple'. There are other words to denote an inexact but small number of things, such as 'a few', 'some', even 'several' is better than imagining that the characters in the books cannot count over three.Also, unless it's a couple dozen, couple hundred or even a couple thousand, couple is followed by the word 'of', even in colloquial speech. As in 'a couple of soldiers walked by', or 'a couple of hours later' I know, picky, picky, picky, but I read them all even with the 'glaring' flaw.:-)

After three books I've grown used to Mr. Robertson's writing style, so this book was the easiest to read. I still found words spelled wrong, confusing punctuation and sentences that were too long or too choppy. The story itself was wonderful and the characters are delightful. They have become my friends and I can't wait to see what they do next. I hated this was the last book I would see them in....but, to my surprise, I found others felt the same way. Thank you, Mr. Robertson, for indulging us by writing another series with the further adventures of Dante and Blays.

So just finished the third and final volume of this series! As in my first review, I still love this worldscape. Love the characters, love the imagery of Ed Robertson's prose! I was actually cold as he described the icy snow covered world! LoL I recommend most highly this series. You get to travel the worldscape and enjoy the adventures of 2 young boys as they flee villains, solve and surprise themselves and the reader. All accomplished with a good time for all! ENJOY!

this series was incredibly good. start to finish, it was well-written. unlike most authors, he finishes each book perfectly, which is where most of them screw it up. i fully intend to read every damn thing this guy writes, so i hope he's young.

Mr. Robertson has crafted a very fine ending to a very fine trilogy. All his characters were memorable, lovable most, eminently execrable, a few--a perfect blend.His command of and manipulation of English is great to experience, as well. It was great to see his style evolve over the seven years he wrote.Thankfully, there are a few loose threads, so perhaps we can see more of the white tree, the Norren, Blays, Cee, and Dante himself, as Blays' "thousands of days" reverie spools onward!Thanks for a very entertaining read!

I read and loved the two previous books. The relationship between the two main characters, Dante and Blays was the hook upon which the rest of the story was hung. Yet in this latest and hopefully last book of the series, (now trilogy), the author has chosen to keep them apart for practically the whole novel. Dante miss understandingly ruins something Blays is working on independently. Blays later does the same to Dante. Fine I could live with that except the author insists on writing alternate chapters about each of their progress, like he wrote two books then shuffled them together. Each chapter is left hanging so you have to plough through the other characters latest exploit and be left hanging, before returning to the previous characters situation. I found this most tedious. Just write a story for goodness sake. Only when the twin storylines thankfully come back into one and these two are at the same place at the same time does this book hit its stride, and for me that was way too near the end. This book takes a meandering and often pointless course to arrive at the practically obvious conclusion. Should have just written it straight and much shorter and it would have been much better in this readers opinion. In my opinion this is disappointing stuff after two colossally good previous books.

As it says in the title of this review "Got to get to the end" Why ? Because it's a great story and any reader will tell you they need to get to the last page, the most important page in any book. Having said that it's just a very good read and temps me to look at your other books. THANK YOU.

Thanks for a very enjoyable week of reading the ,black star. Sad part is that I will now have to find another read that will be as spellbinding . Looking forward to reading more by Edward robertson in the future. Cheers.

well written, brilliant characters, superb storyline, which is unlike previous reads of the same genre, fantasy can tend to be the same sort of story written over and over, but this one is very new and refreshing, would definately recommend, it has war, intrigue, love, everything!! so would appeal to a lot of people

An excellent end to an excellent trilogy. It must be said that the first book is a bit 'unpolished' compared to the subsequent two volumes. Nevertheless, stick with it and you'll be rewarded with a very good fantasy trilogy.

great end to a great triolgy, the whole of this story has given me pure plesure in the reading, thank you Mr Ed Robertson.

A great sequel to the trilogy. A great trilogy. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the books. Some of the answers to problems the protagonists encountered are a little trite but that does not detract from a good storyline.

Loved this last book it was a nice finish to the story but still left you wanting to know if the main players did more with there lives would love to see another book in the series

I have enjoyed reading these books. A real world of fantasy and magic with lots of action. Well written novels. The author can transport you in a world were everything is possible.

One of the best series that I have read in a long time- decent sized books- great tales of strife and war- and friendship. Excellent

Having read the 1st one in a bundle of 7 books, I then went on the buy the 2nd and 3rd in this trilogy. Excellent reading if you like fantasy. Good author.

complete nonsense unless you read the complete series, bought the first book then had to buy the next two, couldn't put them down.

Decent read. Becomes sluggish and slow midway, but picks up in book 3Enjoyed the characters, the plot an the adventure.

when I first started to read this series I was a little wary but I soon became engrossed in the story. well worth the read.

Good