OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO: David Dalglish currently lives in Myrtle Beach with his wife, Samantha, and daughters, Morgan, Katherine, and Alyssa. He graduated from Missouri Southern State University in 2006 with a degree in mathematics and currently spends his free time tanking dungeons for his wife and daughter in Final Fantasy XIV.

FORMAT/INFO: The Slain Divine was released on January 9th, 2024 by Orbit Books. It is 528 pages long and told in third person from multiple POVs. It is available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: With the recent discovery of the Everlorn Empire's grim plans for the island of Thanet, time is running out for its struggling rebellion. The God-Incarnate himself has arrived to oversee a deadly ceremony, one that will lay waste to the island's population while furthering his own immortality. As secrets are revealed amongst allies and new powerful beings enter the playing field, everyone must decide on who to support and how far they're willing to go to thwart the Empire in these final days. For Cyrus, the former prince of Thanet, that means deciding if he's willing to risk losing his soul completely by fully embracing the "Vagrant," the violent shadow entity within him - but if he does so, will he just be replacing the tyrannical rule of the empire with his own tyranny?

The Slain Divine is a solid action-packed finale, albeit one that occasionally feels a bit pulled in too many directions. It is most successful when diving into the central theme of the series: gods and how mythology creates, sustains, and molds them. And not just them, but colonizers and conquerors as well. What people believe in, or who they believe in, is what grants power. The ways those stories and beliefs were engaged with and manipulated in order to find loopholes in power structures on the scale of the divine were the parts of the story that really intrigued me.

As always, the author delivered on action as well, with one fantastic set piece after another. With many characters reaching their final height of power, everything from shapeshifting to divinely summoned spectral swords are on hand. In many ways, the descriptions of these battles invoked visions in my head of video game boss battle fights, where everything is at 11 and nobody questions it.

Where I struggled with a little bit was the sense of pacing and, on a more personal level, tone. With regards to pacing, there was a bit of back and forth in the plotting that I wish had been streamlined. The good guys would be on top, then the bad guys would take the lead, then the good guys would undercut them, each victory being undone in relatively short order. While it did allow for character development, it also felt a bit like treading water while waiting for the finale. And with a growing cast of POV characters, there were a lot of storylines to juggle in this final book, especially as some characters try to make final plays in the last battle. The result was that some resolutions felt incredibly rushed as the author tried to address all of them.

As for the tone, this has always been a bit of a grimdark series, albeit one with hopeful notes throughout. But there's no denying that things look incredibly bleak and hopeless for a good chunk of the story. If you're here for that "darkest before the dawn" material, you'll eat this up, but I think I just wasn't in the right headspace for it at the time of reading the book.

CONCLUSION: The Slain Divine wraps up an intense, brutal saga. It's played with how gods are created and powered in some fascinating ways, and delivered breathtaking action. While I do think in the end the story was hampered by trying to serve too many characters, I overall had a fun time in this world and enjoyed the way divine magic expressed itself.