Books: Destiny

Destiny
By Elizabeth Haydon
835 pages
Copyright 2001

This was the finale of the Rhapsody trilogy (Rhapsody and Prophecy were the other two). I've read these three books over the last six weeks. All three were quite long.

Destiny suffered a bit from a strange subplot that mostly made no sense to me. Rhapsody had part of her memory taken from her by her lover/husband, and this played a big part in much of the non-main-plot action. I found it mostly annoying because it really served no purpose other than to make the book go on and on.

Another oddity about this series of books is that a "time editing" character" named Meridian shows up at the very beginning and end of each book. The reader is clueless as to who this person is and what it is he is attempting to do, aside from alter time to keep the world from burning in fire. We finally find out his purpose in the Epilogue of Destiny. It was clever but I didn't much care for it. I won't go into detail in case someone out there is a rabid fantasy reader.

Frankly, the story would have been just fine, and maybe a little stronger, without the time editor, if it had just been told as the good v. evil epic that it was. I suppose the author couldn't bear to lose the cleverness of it. I also think the final book would have been stronger without the subplot of the memory loss thing.

The writer does a nice job at world-building, and her characters are (mostly) strong. Some of the scenes drone on a bit, and the characters, mostly all of them, seemed determined to inflict much emotional trauma on each other before declarations of absolute love and fidelity. I found that a bit annoying, too.

The main plot works out very well with good resolution.

It may sound like I disliked the book, but I didn't. I think I am a little disappointed that I didn't find it as enthralling as the first two, though.

3 stars