Review – The High King’s Tomb by Kristen Britain (3/5 stars)

This is the third book in the Green Rider series by Kristen Britain. I honestly think it was the weakest of the three books.

In this book Karigan is struggling with the King’s wedding to Lady Estora and, when the Captain Mapstone askes her to go on a seemingly boring mission, Karigan is thrilled to leave the castle. The only downer is that she has to bring along a new Green Rider (Fergal) and train him in on the mission. The D’Yer wall continues to crumble and Alton struggles to find a way to repair it. Of course all is not what it seems to be and Karigan’s simple mission goes awry.

The beginning of this book was slow and meandering. The only excitement was Karigan’s duel with Amberhill in the museum before she left on her mission. I thought Karigan was strangely morose and immature in the beginning of the book; especially with how she treated Lady Estora.

I don’t think that Fergal really added much to the book; I started getting flashbacks to Mercedes Lackey’s Valedmar series when I read about Fergal. The introduction of Amberhill as the destitute noble/rogue was fun. Amberhill is an entertaining character but I struggled to get him to fit into the story. His role in the story seemed forced and a bit unnatural; althought I think this character has promise for the future. Unfortunately I was getting the feeling that Amberhill’s only purpose in this novel is to set him up as a future love interest for Karigan (I guess time will tell).

Damien and Lady Frost were very interesting characters that didn’t get enough page space. It was also nice to see the Berry sisters again; although the role they played was tiny.

The story overall was disappointing. Both Karigan and Alton did a lot of hemming and hawing. There were a lot of issues brought up in the book that were left unresolved (Karigan’s problem with her father trying to foist her off for marriage, etc). I think people who have previously reviewed this book and described it as a transition novel are right. There was a lot of shuffling people around and setting up stuff but not a lot of meaningful action taking place.

At the end of this book I had more questions than answers. I also started to despair that this is going to be a long un-ending series. I think it would have been good as a trilogy; I am worried that it will drag itself down if too many books are slapped onto this series.

So in summary, it was okay. I read it at a pretty good clip for a while and then had trouble finishing it. Hopefully the next book is more meaningful and hopefully it concludes this series!