Soon to be posted on Grimdark Magazine. I received a review copy of The Boundless in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Peter Newman and Harper Voyager.
The Ruthless was my favourite fantasy read of 2019 and that lead to The Boundless being one of my most anticipated releases of 2020. When The Boundless was posted through my letterbox, all the other novels that I have to review ceased to exist temporarily until I had finished The Deathless trilogy. In fact, I re-read both The Deathless and The Ruthless before tackling The Boundless so that the characters, drama, and excitement were totally fresh in my mind. Through doing this I was reminded of some of the exceptional moments that concluded The Ruthless and the hints presented there of what could follow in the series finale. I was extremely excited to finally read The Boundless and Newman did not disappoint at all.
In The Boundless, we still follow the point of view perspectives of Sa-at, Satyendra, Vasinidra, Lady Pari, and Chandni. The events presented here happen straight after the conclusion of The Ruthless. Sa-at is now in Lord Rochant’s floating castle as is the dark doppelganger Satyendra. Lady Pari plans to venture to the chasm beneath the same castle to help her brother Arkav find the missing part of himself. Vasinidra hopes to rid the Wilds of the bane that is the Scuttling Corpseman and, elsewhere in the Wilds, exiled Chandni leaves her fate to the creatures and demons that lurk there.
I don’t want to talk too much about the events of this novel but there are many standout moments, stunning set-pieces, unlikely alliances, long-awaited meetings and reunions, great showdowns and battles, and lots of darkness, death, the unpredictable and the macabre. The Boundless is an extremely satisfying and fitting conclusion to a top-quality series that deserves many more readers. I enjoyed following every point of view perspective and found the characters extremely memorable and engaging. The Wilds is a great character in itself, and contains some wonderful entities like Murderkind, the Dogkin, Whispercages, and the moving trees.
Newman fits a lot of incredible moments into these 437 pages. The Boundless is fast-paced, action-packed and thrilling. In fact, a few scenes were so intense that they seemed to race by at supernatural, Deathless-like speed. A couple of moments seemed to rush by a bit too fast but this is just my personal opinion and it’s my only minor criticism.
I really didn’t want the novel to end, and actually slowed my reading speed as the conclusion approached as I really wanted to savour these moments and this may be the only time these characters grace the pages of fantasy books. I have no idea if Newman plans to return to this well-crafted and darkly endearing world of the Wilds, Deathless, floating castles and the Godroads; but he’ll have a reader waiting in me if he ever chooses to.
I’d give the Deathless series as a whole a 9/10 rating and guess it’s now about time that I try out Newman’s The Vagrant books. To finish up, I can confirm that I had a fantastic reading experience with this deliciously dark, engaging and unique fantasy series and recommend it wholeheartedly.
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