Dangerous Games Book

It took me a while to get through the second, equally brief entry in Clayton Emery's Netheril trilogy. You know the phenomenon where the middle entry in a trilogy travels in a circle and ends up accomplishing nothing? That's more or less what Dangerous Games ends up feeling like.

I very much appreciated a few things about this book. It does a fairly apt job of detailing the decline and eventual end of the Netherese Empire, has some interesting magical effects and descriptions, and Emery is as good as always with his fight scenes. Also on the upside, the fighting is not so overboard as in Sword Play. Sunbright's discovery of his shamanistic abilities was a good plot point, and I enjoyed the resulting encounter with the undead wizard lord who had taken him prisoner. Candlemas also develops nicely as a character throughout this book.

However, I have a pool of complaints as well. First of all, Karsus, the "greatest of the Neth", just seemed phenomenally silly. I understand that he's selfish, manic, sociopathic to some degree and all, but he was just quite uninteresting. Even though I'd say that I actually enjoyed the end of the book pretty well, his final attempt to ascend to godhood and seize Mystryl's power was just hokey and not well played-out.

Secondly, Knucklebones bothers me. Not her character so much as the sudden but inevitable romance with Sunbright (who seems to have the juvenile trait of falling in love with any woman he spends much time around...even while he's in the process of searching for his first love). I don't get it, and this whole plot line frustrated me, as if it was thought that the book couldn't be interesting without some kind of sexual tension.

Other random or silly things happen that seemed to have no bearing on the story and didn't make sense, like Polaris being around, but fat and slovenly, the complete vapidity of, apparently, every Netherese wizard and noble, and more. In all honesty, the world in this book is even less believable than in the prior.