In the thrilling second installment of Chloe Neill’s fantasy spin on the Napoleonic Wars, Captain Kit Brightling, a magically gifted naval officer in direct service to Queen Charlotte of the Isles, has been plagued by dreams. Dreams of rising water and nearing danger, yes, but also dreams of the charming and maddening viscount of Queenscliffe, Colonel Rian Grant. But questions of romance must wait as Kit is asked to find whatever information she can about the machinations of Gerard Rousseau, the exiled former emperor of Gallia.

However, Kit’s quest leads instead to the war criminal La Boucher in a small town on the coast of Gallia. The magic La Boucher wields in Rousseau’s name is deadly and immense, capable of costing hundreds their lives. There is no stopping the oncoming war, but stopping La Boucher can help Kit put the Isles on the right side of it. And to do that, she’ll need all the magic she can muster—as well as the help of a certain handsome nobleman. 

If the first book in Neill’s Captain Kit Brightling series was a slowly rising tide, A Swift and Savage Tide is the flood. Gone is the fragile peace between the Isles and Gallia, replaced by a sense of inevitable conflict and kinetic explosions of all-out war on the high seas. Gone too is the slow-burn romance of the first book, abandoned in favor of an open acknowledgement of mutual desire between Kit and Grant. What remains, however, are the elements that have made the Kit Brightling series a success so far: a wicked sense of humor and the ability to turn tropes on their sides. In addition, Neill’s already-impeccable grasp of pacing has, if possible, improved. Like the waters upon which her captain sails, Neill’s prose ebbs and flows, pulling readers into the bone-crushing anxiety of a reconnaissance mission or a tender moment with Kit’s caring (if mildly insubordinate) crew before thrusting them headfirst into the throes of battle or the rising heat of Kit’s evolving relationship with Grant. A Swift and Savage Tide teases both mystery and adventure for the two in the road that lies ahead.

A Swift and Savage Tide is perhaps even better than A Bright and Breaking Sea, but it cannot be fully enjoyed without having read that first book in the series. New readers should be informed, therefore, that the two books are best enjoyed when read back to back, all while drinking a cup of heavily sugared tea alongside a pile of Kit’s favorite pistachio nougats. The lack of sleep (and cavities) are well worth the effort for such engrossing reads. 

Greta Kelly’s The Frozen Crown introduced Askia, the exiled Queen of Seravesh, as a confident leader struggling to survive amid the schemes and machinations of the Vishir court. But during what should have been her triumph, a political marriage to the Emperor of Vishir, she was kidnapped, and the emperor and his senior wife, Ozura, were murdered—but not before Ozura pledged her soul to Askia’s service. For Askia is not just royalty: She is also a death witch, a rare magical talent who can both commune with and command the dead. Emperor Radovan of Roven, Askia’s kidnapper, intends her to be his seventh queen, to kill her and take her power for his own, as he has done six times before. But Askia has no intention of going quietly.

In Kelly’s follow-up, The Seventh Queen, Askia has morphed into a ruthless manipulator, willing to use any hint of leverage to save her own life and to prevent her world from falling under the dominion of the power-hungry Radovan. While this characterization is something of a leap, it suits Askia’s nature as a doggedly competent survivor. Kelly’s incisive prose, along with a plot that continues to defy fantasy tropes by focusing almost entirely on court intrigue rather than displays of magical or martial prowess, renders such narrative discontinuities forgivable.

One of the highlights of The Seventh Queen may be Radovan himself. In the prior book, he was a sinister yet distant threat, easily dismissed as the inevitable emperor motivated only by a bottomless quest for power. Here, Radovan is revealed as an odd sort of failure, a capricious dictator who began by genuinely trying to right the world’s wrongs. Kelly’s world is one dominated by magical elites, and Radovan is one of the only characters who questions this status quo. 

Radovan is much more compelling than when he was a remote evil, but the treatment of his character is also indicative of the loss of the moral complexity that made The Frozen Crown such an interesting take on fantasy. The Seventh Queen categorizes Radovan’s actions as those of a simple madman whose policies are only twisted parodies of true reform, refusing to admit that there was any merit in his initial crusade and uncomplicatedly championing its aristocratic, magically gifted protagonist. While there is plenty of dramatic tension, the most surprising part of how Kelly concludes her duology is how closely it hews to the standards of high fantasy and abandons the thematic ambition of The Frozen Crown.

While not truly groundbreaking, The Seventh Queen has a compelling villain and an unusual focus on courtly maneuvering for a fantasy novel. It is a wholly satisfying conclusion whose only real shortcoming is its inability to fully realize the ambition of Kelly’s debut.

The release of Steven Erickson’s The Crippled God, the 10th and final book in Malazan Book of the Fallen series, marks the culmination of the single most ambitious, audacious and jaw-droppingly imagined work of epic fantasy since Bilbo Baggins found 13 dwarves outside his door. And it can be argued that even Tolkien’s seminal work lacks the scope—the sheer expanse—of Erickson’s epic.

The central conflict of the series is easy enough to summarize: In ages past, an alien god was torn from its own realm and slammed into this world. In the present, different factions, including the Crippled God itself, battle over what to do about it. To veteran fantasy readers, such a summary might elicit a disinterested, “So?” From Sauron to Shai’tan, from Lord Foul to Voldemort, the fantasy genre practically demands there be a slumbering, chained or just generally surly villain yearning to be free. In fact, though some are well disguised to the point of being fully re-imagined, most of fantasy’s greatest hits populate these pages. The Tiste—be they Andii, Liosan or Edur—are elves. The T’lann Imass are a particularly well-wrought version of the undead. And here there be plenty of dragons.

But attempting to measure Erickson’s achievement by counting tropes and archetypes shared with other “thick-tome generators” in the genre would be like equating Milton’s Paradise Lost with “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”—after all, both are poems. No, it is the ambition of the Malazan Book of Fallen coupled with its execution that dwarfs contemporaries past and present. Fueled in large part by the author’s original day job as an anthropologist, the world of The Crippled God and its nine predecessors is so intricately imagined and layered that it’s an embarrassment of fecundity. The cast and action span multiple continents, worlds, dimensions and, oh yeah, the entire timeline of life’s existence.

It may seem strange to spend so much time writing about the series as a whole instead of the book supposedly being reviewed, but let’s consider the obvious: Anyone who has read the first nine books of Erickson’s epic tale is in it for the long haul, and not even a Robert Jordan-like midstream meandering will stop them. Nonetheless, for those stalwarts, The Crippled God is a worthy capstone to the series, replete with all that which brought you here in the first place. After being separated by chapters, sections and sometimes even entire volumes, virtually all of the series’ most fascinating characters make at least a cursory appearance, and most receive ample, closure-worthy coverage. (Finally, a Malazan book without 50+ new important characters.) The battles, while not quite the “tour de holy cow!” experience of Coltaine’s March or the Siege of Capustan, still pack a punch.

Of course, The Crippled God is not without its flaws, but even those are rather established traits of the series. The first half of the book, especially, suffers from what I can only describe as “excess rumination”—a condition that has plagued Erickson’s series like acne plagues teenagers. But again, any reader who has made it this far will endure, and by the last third of The Crippled God, will likely be so engrossed in watching the myriad pieces fall into place, in watching long-maturing stratagems reveal themselves, that Erickson could throw in some pages from Twilight and no one would care.

As for those epic fantasy fans new to Erickson? It’s not like they would start with The Crippled God, anyway. (Malazan virgin, get thee to Gardens of the Moon!)

But for veteran and virgin alike, The Crippled God represents a moment in fiction that demands recognition—the successful conclusion of something audaciously begun. It’s one thing to start a work brimming with promise; it’s quite another to end it in a manner that delivers on that promise. (And in 12 years, no less—take that, George R.R. Martin!) The Malazan Book of the Fallen is Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. It’s Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy. It’s Mount Rushmore, freshly carved, and the Panama Canal, freshly dug. And as such, fantasy aficionados everywhere should take a moment and appreciate what has been accomplished, even if they don’t find Erickson’s epic to their taste.

After all, the Malazan Book of the Fallen has been an unprecedented seismic event in the history of epic fantasy. Its impact—and its aftershocks—will be felt in the genre for decades to come.