I finished Jennifer Fallon’s Harshini last night. This is book 3 of The Demon Child Trilogy. I liked the first book, Medalon, and loved the second, Treason Keep. So it breaks my heart to say that Harshini didn’t satisfy me.

My problem was that a few of the characters, and in particular the main character, changed dramatically between the end of Treason Keep and the start of Harshini. Now I know the whole point of novels is to watch people change and grow. But this just felt ‘off’ to me. This is an awkward metaphor, but it was as if R’Shiel had been a medical student in Medalon, an intern in Treason Keep, then a lawyer in Harshini. I kept thinking “Wait? What? R’Shiel wouldn’t be acting like this!”

Again, don’t take the metaphor too literally. I’m not actually talking career choices here. But she was brash and wreckless in the first two books, yet she was also sympathetic. Your heart went out to this young girl that was facing so many hardships and so many uncomfortable truths. You could forgive her her faults, what with everything she was going through.

In Harshini, she is still brash and wreckless, but now she is also thoughtless. She keeps doing things that hurt people and doesn’t really seem to care. Or if she cares, she doesn’t learn from the experience. When her actions — actions that she has been advised against again and again — cause the death of someone she seems to like and respect, she laments it for about one paragraph. In the first two books she’s often referred to as a spoiled brat, but it isn’t until Harshini that she begins acting like one.

Stan Lee once said (through the mouth of Uncle Ben in Spiderman) “With great power comes great responsiblitly.” Listen up, authors. You need to listen to Stan! The man knows that of which he speaks! In this book R’Shiel is wielding great power, but she’s wielding it with no thoughts of responsibility or consquences. It would be a trivial thing to change Harshini into a book where R’Shiel was the great evil to be conquered, really. Specially since the ‘evil god’ in these books is uncomfortably close to the Christian God in what he considers sinful. (Fallon’s ‘out’ here is that Xaphista considers love a sin. Don’t ask me how he expects his followers to procreate.)

When the hero of a book is someone you find yourself strongly disliking, it’s hard to enjoy the book. So that was my main issue. My other main gripe is with the gods. They’re active characters in this series but in the first two books Fallon managed to restrain them in various ways. But in Harshini, they become a deus ex machina solution to too many problems. At the same time, R’Shiel is, well, a nasty bitch to them constantly and they just sigh and let her walk all over them. Very strange.

So now I’m stuck. I don’t know if I can still recommend the other two books, knowing the end is going to be such a let down. I suppose I still can. Harshini isn’t a horrible book, by any means. Other readers may even like the newly empowered R’Shiel. But to me… although I’m glad I read the book, it was just a disappointment after how wonderful I’d found Treason Keep to be.

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain against the windows and nothing else. It took me a moment to realize what had me feeling odd. The power was off. No quiet humming, no blinking lights. No lure of TV or the internet. Nothing to do but curl up near a window with a good book and read while the rain continued to lash at the glass.

And so I finished Treason Keep, the second book in Jennifer Fallon’s Demon Child Trilogy. If you’ve read my review of the first book, Medalon, you know I had some issues with the writing on a technical level. I’m happy to say that Ms. Fallon’s second book is much more polished, with the only real problem being a somewhat rushed ending. Characters undergo some rather drastic changes in attitude quite rapidly, just in time for the book to end. It’s almost as if Ms. Fallon had a certain word count that she needed to finish inside of, and ran out of room.

But that doesn’t mean Treason Keep is a bad book. Far from it. Once again Ms. Fallon grabs us by the hand and drags us along through a wonderful adventure. There’s magic, love, political intrigue and battle. What more can the fantasy reader ask for? Our favorite characters from Medalon return, and Fallon smoothly introduces new people for us to love or hate, as the case may be. Along the way we lose some friends, too; here is an author who knows how to pick characters to kill off. Her victims are important enough that we really care about them dying, but not so important that we lose interest in the story or feel betrayed.

Harshini is the last book in the trilogy and I’ll waste no time in getting started with it. Fallon has me in her clutches and I have to know how this story will play out. Medalon was a very enjoyable book. Treason Keep is better. Recommended.

I’m having a bit of a dilemma. What should be my focus when reviewing a book?

Jennifer Fallon’s Medalon is the cause of my cundundrum. I can’t help but think if she submitted it to a workshop or something, it’d be torn to pieces by writers who’ve learned all the rules, as I have (or am trying to). There are some very strange feeling point-of-view shifts, and the story jumps back and forth in time in a way that can be distracting. There are little details that don’t work, like people swimming out to a ship and throwing a grappling hook up over the rails to board (can’t be done). So technically, it has issues.

And yet I sit here in a sleep-deprived fog because the book had me up until 6am and 3am respectively, for the past couple of nights. I loved it. Couldn’t put it down. So what matters? That I could see some rules-breaking, or that I enjoyed the read?

Happily I’m just a dumb blogger and I’m not getting paid to make these kinds of decisions, so I’m going to go with that fact that it was a really fun read.

Medalon is a small country ruled by “The Sisterhood of the Blade,” an athiestic governing body. Oddly, none of the sisters carry blades, instead they are supported by The Defenders, the all-male army of Medalon. To the north is Karien, ruled by The Overlord, who prays to the god Xaphista, aided by a cadre of zealous priests. To the south lie Hythria and Fardohnya, both of which worship the Harshini and the ‘pagan’ gods.

It’s an interesting world. Existing somewhere between the gods and the people are, or were, the Harshini, a magical race who can see and speak to the gods. When the Sisterhood came to power, they wiped out, or drove out, the Harshini. Karien and Medalon have an uneasy treaty, one condition of which is that the Sisterhood wipe out any pagan worshippers that might show their heads.

As our story begins, rumors of coming of The Demon Child are spreading. This child, half-human, half-Harshini, is suppose to herald the return of the Harshini and gods to Medalon. Pagan cults are springing up all over Medalon, and Karien is threatening to cross the border to stamp them out if the Sisterhood doesn’t do it themselves.

Enter R’Shiel and Tarja, the son and daughter of the ambitious and ruthless Joyhinia, a member of the ruling Quorum of the Sisterhood of the Blade. Medalon follows their story.

And, if you’re in the mood for a complex novel with intertwining storylines, Medalon isn’t it. The book is pretty strongly focused on R’Shiel and Tarja, and while there are of course sub-plots, this isn’t the next ‘Song of Ice and Fire.’

But Fallon delivers a rich and interesting world and characters who are likable (or hateable in a good way, as the case may be). The pacing is brisk and every chapter leaves you hungry to know what happens next. Even though some parts are quite predictable, the ride is still enjoyable, and none of the characters are stupid. No one is going down into the dark basement to check on that odd noise while the homicidal maniac is on the loose, if you know what I mean. Some of the characters accept huge challenges to their belief system a bit too easily, but again, that’s one of the ‘problems’ with the book that would get it poor marks with a literature professor, but which really didn’t get in the way of me enjoying the hell out of it.

Fallon’s extremely enjoyable Second Sons trilogy was a ‘bigger’ and more ambitious tale, and had a more ‘professional’ feel to it. As a wannabe writer, it has been interesting for me to compare her first work to her later novels. She’s gotten better than she was when she wrote Medalon, but that doesn’t prevent me from giving Medalon two big thumbs up. Fallon is on my short list of ‘must read’ authors and I expect to enjoy everything she produces. We’ll see.