Rulers of the Darkness (Darkess Series #4) Book

The World at War series continues to plod along here, with more of the same as we got from the previous couple of books. Familiar characters dealing with familiar situations take up the entirety of this fourth book in the overly-long series, as Turtledove fails to introduce anything very new to the lagging story. While the overall plot does progress here, it is very slow and nearly every character seems caught up in some sort of Groundhog Day-like repetitive cycle to the point where you feel like you've read it all before. All that being said, if you've enjoyed the first three books, you'll want to press through this one if for no other reason than to learn the fate of these well-developed (by now) characters.

One good thing is that Turtledove has cut back on his overly-repetitive descriptions of characters, places, and customs. While there is still plenty of frustrating writing quality issues like bad puns, not-quite-clever witticisms, heavy-handed plays on words, and just-plain-stupid metaphors, you at least get a break from the maddening reminders of how camel meat tastes bad or roofs leak in Zuwayzi. So, you might still cringe when you read that "His voice was powerful and smooth, like strong tea with milk.", but you do get a break from being reminded that Gyongosians don't eat goat every 50 pages.

Overall, an improvement in the writing quality, but a loss of excitement in the majority of the story content.