The Fall of Koli – A Book Review

Blurb:

The world that is lost will come back to haunt us . . .

Koli has come a long way since being exiled from his small village of Mythen Rood. In his search for the fabled tech of the old times, he knew he’d be battling strange, terrible beasts and trees that move as fast as whips. But he has already encountered so much more than he bargained for.

Now that Koli and his companions have found the source of the signal they’ve been following – the mysterious “Sword of Albion” – there is hope that their perilous journey will finally be worth something.

Until they unearth terrifying truths about an ancient war . . . and realise that it may have never ended.

Author: M. R. Carey

Publisher: Orbit Books

Release Date: 25/03/2021

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic

Series: The Rampart Trilogy #3

Pages: 560

My Chosen Format: Kindle

My Rating of ‘The Fall of Koli’: 5 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon, Audible

Review:

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It’s been a long time since I read a trilogy and thought ‘Wow, I did not want that to end’. Well, a long time until right now. The Rampart Trilogy was one of those trilogies where the only chance of the author getting hate mail is because he finished it.

This book, and the trilogy as a whole, were utterly brilliant. It had so much going for it that I find myself lost for words to adequately describe how much I enjoyed it.

My main fear for ‘The Fall of Koli’ was that I just didn’t think there was much chance of it topping the second book in the series. For my money, it didn’t quite top it overall, although it did top it as far as the awesomeness of the end is concerned. Where Book two was impeccably solid from start to finish, book three was good, good, great, excellent. It felt like it was going steadily up a hill just so it could plough down the other side in one brilliant blaze of awesomeness.

In this book we learn so much about the world as it used to be, how it got to where it is, and how the gods ‘Stannabanna’ and ‘Dandrake’ came into being. It’s a fun, yet slightly hard to believe, look at how mankind managed to ruin everything for itself and almost willingly descend into a new dark age.

Carey tied every loose end up that had been blowing free since book one in what can only be described as an ‘incredibly satisfying way’. There was a lot more character development of the tertiary characters in this book. Where book one and two focused on the main ones and the secondary characters to them, this one did that and then went further to give you a more complete feel of the world and the people that populate it.

I’ve never read anything by this author before picking up the Rampart Trilogy but, it’s safe to say, I’ll be doing my best to rectify that going forward. Not only is Carey a great writer who can weave an excellent story without getting bogged down in the appealing mire of over-explaining everything, or going off on tangents to explore the world he’s created, he knows how to write a complete trilogy. Other authors should take note. Not every series needs to be 10+ books long. If you can tell an amazing story in three books, I rate you higher than someone who tries to make it into the teens and inevitably has a couple of bad ones along the way.

Still, saying that, I’m absolutely devastated that Koli and friends are done with their journey. I’ll certainly miss reading of their exploits.