This morning I finished The Gathering Storm by Kate Elliott, the 5th in the fantasy series The Crown of Stars.

Like the last time I read one of her books, I read most of this one on an airplane. As I wrote back in April, big fantasy books are perfect company for flying - engrossing enough in the moment to distract you from long waits/flights but un-important/un-challenging enough that you can follow the plot without giving them your full attention and throw them away if you need more space/less weight in your luggage.

The Gathering Storm is a good continuation of this series. It does a number of unexpected things - in particular, it wraps up a number of ongoing plot elements built up over the last 4 books even though it is not the last in the series. Now that I've read it, I'm curious to see what happens in the last book.

But first, I have to make some time for Harry Potter!

Amazon Link: The Gathering Storm

While I was back home in Canada, I finished Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton, the sequel to Pandora's Star, which I wrote about here.

Judas Unchained wraps up the story nicely, tying off all the loose ends. As is usual in a lot of books, the resolution is often not as interesting as the build up for a lot of fiction. Creating a mystery and making it seem important while it is still a mystery is a lot easier than coming up with something that is fully satisfying once it's fully revealed.

The only negative thing I have to say about this book is that if I hadn't read Pandora's Star only a few weeks before I read this one, I think it would have been very difficult to keep all the characters/locations/plot points seperate. This book continues right where the last one left off with no attempt made to re-introduce characters or situations or summarize anything that happened in the first book.

Amazon Link: Judas Unchained