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| Image credit: Pinterest |
With the escape of the Emperor Mage now turned Stormwing,
Ozorne, war has finally come to Tortall. Port towns are under siege by fleets
from the Copper Isles and armies from Scanra, not to mention Ozorne’s own formidable
force of Immortals. During a battle with some fearsome creatures called ‘Skinners’
Daine and Numair find themselves transported to the Divine Realms where Daine
is reunited with her mother and finally meets her father. But the reunion is
short-lived as both Daine and Numair feel the need to return to their home and
it becomes clear that the war in the mortal realm is one that is being mirrored
in the Divine, with the Queen of Chaos, Uusoae, fighting her siblings in person
at home and through Ozorne in the mortal realm.
Visually, this is a very cool book. It’s the climactic one
where there is plenty of action and battle sequences, but also it’s the one
where we finally get to travel to a place often heard about, but never seen. The
Divine Realms is definitely the fantasy-lover’s paradise with talking animals,
enchanted forests, and all manner of fantastical beasts and environments,
including the land of Dragons (I was particularly excited and invested in this
part). While it’s critical in Daine’s character arc to have this book where she
travels to another world that is a part of her, I could not help but feel that
the pace of this book was erratic and that was a bit discombobulating. We begin
in action, in the midst of battle, and then everything goes quiet and slow for
a long time, before violently changing to the roaming quest/travel narrative
that sees many thrilling trials and tribulations. Reading it, it felt like
there was a path that was being followed, but at a jagged pace; like when you
run for a bit and then walk to cool down and then surge forward with a run
again… or a bad roller coaster. There’s this weird stop-start energy in the flow
of the narrative that I found jarring.
And then the final, climactic part of the story: the
confrontation with Ozorne and his army, was really underwhelming. It had been
built up during the journey back from the Divine Realms and then when the time finally
came, it felt like the narrator had run out of steam.
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| Image credit: Audible |
But I do have to say that Daine’s character journey definitely comes to a satisfying conclusion in this book, and maybe that was the point all along. Afterall, these stories are about the protagonist going from outcast child to a powerful saviour of the realms, growing from alienated youth to loved woman over the course of years. And Pierce does do this very well. Let it never be said that this woman could not write compelling and captivating stories about young, intelligent women making room for themselves in the world, because that’s what both Song of the Lioness and The Immortals is about. The back of this book has a quote from the School Library Journal that says, ‘Daine… is an ideal heroine – adventurous, intelligent, and gifted with magical powers’, and this is entirely the type of female protagonist that I love to see in children’s fantasy, so I applaud and commend Pierce for her work.
While The Realms of the Gods was not my favourite of
the books in this series, I still loved it and powered through it in no time. It’s
a sound end to an exciting series and a must-have for anyone who has a penchant
for children’s fantasy.
Author: Tamora Pierce, 1996
Published: Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon &
Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, New York, 1996
The Realm of the Gods is the final book in Tamora
Pierce’s The Immortals quartet. Be sure to check out Daine’s other
adventures in Wild Magic, Wolf-Speaker, and Emperor Mage.
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