Robert N. Charette's final volume of Secrets of Power, Find Your Own Truth, is very exciting, and deftly maneuvers around several plot threads right up until the end, when it falls flat on its face during the dismount.
We start with Twist/Sam off in Australia doing his best Indiana Jones and trying to recover a stone filled magic to heal his sister Janice of her Wendigo transformation. What he doesn't know is that said stone is a keystone keeping the totem of Spider in check. (Note to readers: most totems in the setting are "good". Insect and arachnid totems aren't.)
Any rate, Sam's big ritual to heal his sister doesn't work, so he going looking for Howling Coyote, the Amerind shaman responsible for the Ghost Dance that reshaped North American politics not long after the Awakening. The Elves are looking for the stone, and Sato of Renraku who played a small part in book one is looking for Sam. Dodger is looking for the ghost in the machine he keeps running in to.
Finally, in the third act, everyone finds what they're looking for, as Sam manages to recreate the Ghost Dance, and we get what feels a LOT tacked on as plot threads long ignored suddenly get tied in to the finale. Which is fine, it just feels a bit like a GM liking a players' idea enough to rewrite a plot line that they suggested into the canon. It happens, but it also feels very very tacked on.
Was reading this trilogy worth it?
Yeah, even if the setting has developed well beyond the scope of what this early fiction presents. Which I'm not going to complain about, since it's fascinating to see how things evolved over the years.
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