Wrath of a Mad God
Raymond E. Feist
 Wrath of a Mad God finishes the Darkwar saga. Pug, Magnus, Nakor and Ralan Bek have reached the Dasati home world, and are now working with the followers of the White, what they called their pantheon of gods who were evicted from the second plane by the Dark God. Macros learns that the living Gods of Midkemia -- including the Nameless -- made an agreement with the gods of the second plane of reality (if they are not one and the same), and a result was that the soul of Macros was forced into the second plane of reality after his encounter and subsequent death at the hands of Maarg the demon king of the 5th plane of reality. Ralan Bek is not the God Killer, containing not a sliver of Nalar the nameless one, but he carries a sliver of the Dasati god of war to prepare the way for the true God Killer. The Dark God turns out to be an obese Dread Lord, feeding off the countless souls of the dead in the Dasati realm. The Dreadlord had previously invaded the third and fourth plane of reality, consuming all life within both realms. His ultimate goal is to devour enough souls in the second plane to transport himself into the first plane, where the world of Midkemia resides. As the invasion of Kelewan begins, the Dasati take many prisoners and throw them back through the rift to the Dasati world straight towards the waiting Dreadlord who consumes the souls of the falling bodies. The Dreadlord is eventually defeated by a combination of two factors as it tries to travel through the rift to Kelewan; the God Killer, which is revealed to be the tiny sliver of Nalar sheltered by Leso Varen, is released by Nakor in his final act and attacks the Dreadlord from behind, whilst Pug puts a rift in front of Kelewan's moon and slightly adjusts its orbit, forcing a massive chunk of rock to collide with the Dreadlord as it tries to emerge from the rift. For once, Nalar, the mad God of Evil, worked in concert with the other gods of his pantheon, to prevent the Dreadlord from subverting his role as the ultimate force for evil in the first plane of reality. Continuing on with the two stories, one book -theme started in the preceding book, Miranda, who remained behind in the first plane of reality, escapes from the Deathpriests of the Dasati. She travels to Kelewan, and there leads the Tsurani in the defense of their, ultimately doomed, home-world. There are several small continuity errors in this book if considered as part of the wider Feist canon: Lord Erik von Darkmoor is described as regretting that he never "married and had children", in contradiction to Rage of a Demon King, where Erik married Kitty before the fall of Krondor. On his website in the FAQ section, Feist states that while Erik did marry, that "Erik and Kitty didn't stay married long, because of the 'married to two wives, me and the Kingdom' sort of thing, but it got cut because it was too soap opera. No kids, though." When Jim Dasher arrives with Tomas on the back of a dragon to aid Kaspar and the anoredhel elves, Kaspar asks to be introduced to the Warleader and says "I know him by reputation only". It is also stated that Kaspar's only previous contact with an elf had been a "most fleeting" encounter with an envoy at Sorcerer's Isle. However, Kaspar journeyed to Elvandar with Pug and the Talnoy in Exile's Return, met various elves including the Elf Queen herself, and fought alongside Tomas to defend Elvandar. The Dread are also retconned as being from the 'void', as opposed to the Sixth Circle. Also, the Dread were retconned to be unkillable, which is in direct opposition to actions in Magician. The Minwanabi reappear in the Empire despite the destruction of that house in Servant of the Empire, with only an inadequate explanation as to their reappearance. On his website's FAQ section Feist states "I did not detail how the Minwanabi gained back their estates under the Acoma generosity (nor the end of House Lujan) as that was too much backstory for what I was writing about and would only confuse those who hadn't read the Empire Trilogy." Sezu, Emperor of Tsuranuanni, and grandson of Justin mentions that no one has lived on the ancestral lands of the Acoma since Justin was proclaimed emperor. Yet at the end of Mistress of the Empire an imperial proclamation was issued naming Lujan head of House Lujan and giving him title to live on the ancient Acoma lands. On the FAQs on his website, Feist writes "There was a minor plot point that got lost, really, regarding Lujan. I'll fix that when I do the paperback fixes; mostly his line didn't last very long, in a story I'll reference, but never get around to writing." and "It was a minor gaff on my part, not putting in a line or two to explain that. At one point Lujan's heir did not have children, so the estate reverted to the crown." Chapter 8, "Threats", of the Harper Voyager paperback edition includes the line "No one has lived there since the son of Lord Lujan died without an heir and it reverted to the crown" (spoken by Sezu to Miranda.) In explaining the errors, in the FAQ section of his website Feist writes "A lot of things have happened in my life and in the series between Eric and Kitty (for one example) and the new book. So the fan can go, 'Oh, that annoys me,' with justification. Me I go, 'Damn, I was going to toss in a line about how things didn't work out and I forgot.'" and further explains "It used to be it would be copy-edited. ... Now, copy-edit is done on the fly by the editor or is out-sourced to a copy edit service. That means internal stuff may be caught, such as 'he was wearing green in chapter 1 and now it's blue. Did he change?' What it doesn't give you is continuity over a span of books."