Uncrowned

Every classic Role Playing Game (or book) deserves a good, old-fashioned tournament story. Uncrowned is Cradle’s tournament story, which ends up being another one of the most fun Cradle novels to read. The main drawback of this book is similar to the third and fourth books – it is not a complete story on its own, and requires book eight for a resolution.

The story starts out strong, with some training montages against a variety of entitled, annoying competitors, and then moves at a quick pace all the way to the (sort of) end. It’s also our best insight yet into some of the themes for the rest of the series, as we get to know more about the major conflicts and characters that define the world of Cradle.

The major characters are displayed well and with a good amount of character development, as we learn more of Eithan’s backstory and get to see Mercy from a different perspective.

All in all, I want to say this book is great and give it an 8, but there are a few scenes from the Abidan plotline that are basically mandatory skipped pages. That, combined with the lack of a decent ending, makes me drop a very enjoyable book down to a 7.