Witch Star

Rating:
Summary: Wonder! Simply and absolutely that!
Review: The Banned and Banished keep me from start to finish. I mean, the characters, story, everything! It was all wonderful and when I finished this book I was shocked because well, it's over. No more of Elena or Sy'wen or anyone. Wit'ch Star it great in the way Clemens keeps us guessing and wondering what'll happen next. And the end, while maybe not an original idea, was still wonderful! Go Clemens, I hope he comes out with another great book or series because I love his writing and wish to read more!

Rating:
Summary: An incredible tale comes to a climactic end!
Review: The last in this series has enough twists and turns to absolutely make you hold your breath in anticipation. You don't know who is going to betray whom, or which of your favorite characters are going to survive this white knuckle adventure. It's filled with new evils, some of which can only be found in your worst nightmares...(spiders, lots and lots of spiders! Ugh!) This last installment in this series is a fitting conclusion to a wonderful ride into a world of fantasy and magick. I am still in awe that such a splendidly complicated tale can bloom from anyone's mind. Bravo Monsieur Clemens, job well done.

Rating:
Summary: The story ends
Review: The story ends with the final insallment of the Banned and the Banished series. And it does, in fact, end.

Elena and her motley crew face the biggest challenges yet in this climax to the story arc. Here we learn exactly who and what the Dark Lord is (a rather disappointing choice in my opinion, though unexpected) and more importantly, why he has corrupted the land (and an even bigger disappointment).

The reasons are hard to believe in that they really don't hold with the amount of devestation the Dark Lord has caused.

This last chapter as a whole is a good end to the series however. We do lay to rest many questions, although the ultimate question "what happens next?" isn't answered for us. It almost seems as though Clemens is leaving a spark with which to start a new series about the land of Alasea. At one point we are simply cut off from the stories of our characters' lives with only one small insight into what might have happened to them after the final showdown.

The end isn't entirely disappointing with the well-written battles we've come to expect and at least the characters aren't left hanging.

The character introduced in this book as an addition to Elena's crew seems underused. Almost as if Clemens had more in mind for him, but was cut short on length.

Some of the paths he sets his characters on in this final chapter are somewhat out of character, making it seem like he put these things in randomly simply to move the plot forward and with no real reasoning behind them. It left me feeling betrayed after reading about characters I've come to know doing things they would never do.

But overall the series holds up as a good read and worth the time. It isn't as brilliant as it could have been, but it doesn't completely lose shape and fall apart after the first 3 books either.