“Heart of the Wyrdwood” by RJ Barker

For those who have been eagerly awaiting book 3 of the Forsaken trilogy: Good news! Excellent final volume. Good work on Barker’s part wrapping everything up. It’s always hard writing a review of the last book in a series without spoilers, so apologies for this being irritatingly vague.

The scope of this trilogy came a long, long way from Cahan scraping out an existence on his farm - it’s honestly hard for me to recall how small-scale the books began. As much as things scaled up in book 2, they scaled up again at least as much in book 3.

Once again we have a shift in dominant POVs. This time around, the chief perspectives are those of Udinny, Venn, Dassit, and Sorha. We also get occasional glimpses of Saradis and, yes, Cahan, but those first four are definitely our chief protagonists.

Barker laid his groundwork carefully. Everything here built on what was learned about Crua in the first two books, but I will admit I did not expect the direction things were going to go. Barker took me completely by surprise, so well done.

The last 15% or so was very intense. I may have been hiding in various unused rooms at work today so I could finish up uninterrupted - thankfully things are quiet at work right now. And the ending felt well-earned. I have a ton of questions, and I do not expect Barker to ever answer them (if he even knows the answers), but the ending was nonetheless satisfying. All the major characters got the endings they deserved.