Book Review: Crown of Shadows by C.S. Friedman

Crown of Shadows by C.S. Friedman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A year after the events in the East, the two survivors arrive back to where they began not knowing the condition of the war that they only know is happening. Crown of Shadows completes C.S. Friedman’s Coldfire trilogy as a priest slowly losing his place in the order and an antihero sorcerer face off against the machinations of a demon of stunning origins.

This book is a mixture of characters dealing with their hearts in conflict and dealing with events that put the world in danger, though both are connected to one another. Damien Vryce and Gerald Tarrant while attempting to figure out how to defeat the demon Calesta, they must deal with the consequences of their working together. For Vryce it turns out that while his faith is intact, he can no longer be a priest while Tarrant sees the ending with his contract with the Unnamed that makes a deal with Tarrant’s servant who then turns the Forest to his own purposes. The climax sees the series mixture of science fiction and fantasy seeing each genre having it place in the text as the nature of demons is explained in a surprising way and the defeat of Calesta results in the fundamental changing of the fantasy aspect of this world forever. This final installment was stronger than its predecessor as the traveling was kept to a minimum number of pages and more pages were dedicated to character development not only of Vryce and Gerald but the other three important characters setting up a satisfying climax to the series.

Crown of Shadows is an very good and satisfying conclusion to C.S. Friedman’s unique fantasy-science fiction that saw interesting and intriguing characters placed on a very fascinating world.

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