Trudi Canavan is one of my favourite authors and for good reason. The worlds she makes are compelling and different from the vast majority of fantasy out there.

This book is the third and final book in the Traitor Spy series which picks up about 20 years or so after the events of the Black Magician Trilogy. When I first found out that there was a continuation of that series I was worried it would be a bit of a money grabber, but this series and the prequel are each well written and really add to the story that was already known.

It has been almost a year since I read the previous entry in the series and I will admit I remembered very little of the events - Canavan has a knack in this book at reminding you of the events of previous books without recapping them and does so to great effect.

As to the events of this book I am glad with how they all turned out with the exception of

Cerys death

. Yes there were hints throughout that something was wrong but for

him to die like that

it felt so... wrong. When you recall how this person acted in the original trilogy it seems like such a waste. Lorkin has definitely grown up from the youth we were first introduced to, Dannyl is, to be honest, as naive as ever but that's part of the reason why I like him! I also quite liked the growth in the relationship between Sonea and Regin. He has a clear character arc over the six books and is a great example of how you can go from really disliking someone to actually wanting to hear more about them. There were some cliché moments here and there

like how all the traitors could see that Sonea and Regin liked one another and thought that they were lovers before it was acknowledged or even really noticed by Sonea

.

Was this the best end to the series... well, no - I found the events at the end of the original trilogy to be much better (after all who can forget the shock at

Akkarins

death??), but it worked. There were also some hints there as to a possible continuation (I swear the ballshooter referred to in the last pages is a gun - and how interesting would it be to see the Guild learn about and adapt to guns??), if that is the case I look forward to reading more about this world.