About a month ago, Our Beloved and Dreaded Supreme Dark Lord (PBUH) Voxemort the Most Malevolent and Terrible, linked to an old poast of mine, in which I reviewed the original, initial release of A Sea of Skulls. As OBADSDL(PBUH) noted, I had a lot of very good things to say about that original release:

Even in its current abbreviated form, if you printed this book out and dropped it on someone’s head from ten feet up, you’d cause brain damage. Yet for all of that, it is lean, taut, and focused.

That did not happen by accident. Vox Day realised very quickly that if he was going to write a book that was in every way bigger and more complex than its predecessor, he would have to be far more disciplined than he had been with his earlier book. That is why it took him so long to write even roughly half of this tome- but the results speak for themselves.

By biting off only what he can chew, being highly structured and disciplined in his approach, and focusing solely on plot, character, story, and world-building, Vox has avoided making all of the mistakes that George R. R. Martin made with his last two ASOIAF books. You won’t find any ideological axe-grinding (beyond maybe a lecture delivered by one character to another concerning the decline of the Elvish people). And you sure as hell won’t find any Mary Sue protagonists who are just too perfect in every possible way.

The result is so good that it deserves to be called the finest high-fantasy book of its time.

Following on from that, OBASDL(PBUH) noted that he would be interested to read what I had to write about the full release of the book, which dropped (so to speak) late last year.

Well, when the Supreme Dark Lord (PBUH) commands it, we Vile Faceless Minions – yes, I am one of them – must, by definition, respond.

In point of fact, I did actually review it – just not as a stand-alone book review. I packed it into my annual rundown of the best books I read, and I called ASOS the best book I had read throughout all of 2023.

Granted, I did not actually have very many points of comparison – I have been very lazy over the past several years with my reading. But I found A Sea of Skulls to be absolutely impossible to put down. And I read it all the way through – beginning to end – because 6 years is a very long time between books, so I made sure I got the entire plot down before I reviewed it.

Here is what I said at the time:

So, has he stuck the landing with the full version of Book 2?

Mostly, yes, he has.

ASOS has a few flaws to it, most of which relate to the difficulties in keeping the various plot-lines straight. You may have to go back and read the first book again to understand all the machinations behind the Amorran side of things – it has, after all, been eleven years since the first book saw the light of day, and quite a lot has happened since then.

The biggest flaw with the book has to be the ending, which definitely feels rushed and more than a little forced. I get the distinct impression that OBADSDL(PBUH) found himself getting lost in the details and realised this giant door-stopper of a book was getting really crazy – the full book will probably clock in at around 914 (!!!!!) pages, and that is a monumental text by any measure.

None of this changes a fundamental fact:

This is one of the best high fantasy books ever written.

Considering the company it shares, with the likes of Tolkien, Martin (back during the early days), Brooks, and others, this is a very serious claim. I assure you, the writing backs it up. The nihilism and stupidity of Martin’s books is GONE from this one. There is a clear purpose and plot to everything, and you can see, feel, and fully understand the Christian ideas guiding OBADSDL(PBUH)‘s writing.

The plot goes through a number of different perspectives at the individual level, but never, ever loses sight of the fact that the overarching plot is a true war between gods – or demigods, in this case. You see this emerging toward the end, where multiple demigods converge into the worlds of Men, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and Goblins, and make their immensely powerful presences felt.

You also get a very clear sense of the power of God and Christ in this book…

At least 10 months have passed since the release of that book. This has given me a lot of time to let the messages and ideas within it to percolate and move around in my brain. And I can say that I stand by my original (albeit short) review, both in terms of the positives and the negatives.

The primary negative, in my view, is the rather abrupt way – at least, in my opinion – that the book ended. The pacing felt just a bit off. And this is not the first time I have seen this. I thought Summa Elvetica ended in a similar, rather chopped-off fashion – as if OBADSDL(PBUH) sort of realised things might be meandering a little, and decided to wrap things up right quick.

However, this is a relatively minor criticism, especially when you compare ASOS with the competition.

Consider: The Return of the King really basically wraps up more or less at the end of Book 5, or thereabouts, when the One Ring is finally destroyed, and Aragorn becomes the King of Gondor. But then, The Master decided to meander through the Shire and that whole weird subplot involving “Sharkey” (aka Saruman). If you have only ever watched the movie, you will not have read through that, and will not appreciate just how jarring it is to have to read through another few hundred pages of stuff that, in retrospect, seems kind of pointless.

And that is at the end of one of the greatest fantasy books ever written, crafted by the man who literally DEFINED what High Fantasy is.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have George Rape Rape Martin’s A Dance of Dragons, which is… just UNBEARABLE. Seriously, it is AWFUL. By the time we get to this gigantiferous tome, there are something like (I think) 30 different point-of-view characters, which is simply way too many to keep track of and understand. It just goes on, and on, AND BLOODY ON.

This also happens to be why ol’ Rape Rape cannot seem to finish A Song Of Ice and Fire. It has been, I think, some 12 years since ADOD landed with an almighty crash, and GRRM seems no closer to finishing that stupid saga than he was at the end of the TV show. I suspect is because the TV show actually gave us a clear idea of exactly how Rape Rape wanted to end the series, and he – along with the rest of us – quickly realised what an appallingly stupid mess he had made of it all.

So he stopped, and I do not imagine he will ever finish the series. Nor, frankly, should he.

By comparison, A Sea of Skulls suffers from no such shortcomings. It is taut, lean, well written, and moves along at a blistering pace – right up to the last chapters involving Bessarias and the destruction of the Ork and Goblin army, which does seem a bit forced and rushed. But there is no sense at all of a book that is out of control, or meandering, or overstuffed.

Instead, you get the real sense of a writer who is in FULL command of the universe he created, and who has concentrated on exactly what matters – world, plot, and character, in that order, descending. The last chapters setup A Game of Gods very nicely.

Based on the strength of the first two entries in the series, I think the forthcoming book will be truly great.

There is ONE caveat: let us hope it takes a bit less than 11 years between A Sea of Skulls, and A Game of Gods.

That is not an exaggeration. From what I recall, A Throne of Bones dropped back in late 2012, and I reviewed it back in January 2013 – right back when I started blogging, in fact. The first half (give or take) of A Sea of Skulls arrived back in late 2016, and then we got the full book toward the end of 2023. So, yeah, about 11 years, more or less, between instalments.

All that being said, OBASDL(PBUH) has set an exceedingly high bar for quality. Very few authors can come within an hundred miles of The Master’s ability to construct worlds, the way he did with The Lord of the Rings. Fewer still can craft tight, well-written, interesting, likeable characters – without any real hint of self-insertion, particularly with respect to the primary heroes.

Almost NONE can claim to be very nearly as good as Tolkien at what he did. I think you can count those on the fingers of one hand. And the fact that Our Beloved and Dreaded Supreme Dark Lord (PBUH) Voxemort the Most Malevolent and Terrible, is among them, should tell you something about the odds of success for the next (and final, or so he says) instalment.