Stormy Weather...

So, as promised, I finished Mercedes Lackey's Storm Breaking, the final book in her Mage Storms trilogy.

Most of the book centers on a few places of power, from Elsbeth and Darkwind with Tremane in Shonar, to Braon Melles and Emperor Charlis in Jokona, as well as the group stuck in the basement of Urtho's Tower in the Dhorsia Plains.

Basically, the group in Shonar gets Tremane to accept the Earth Binding, a "primitive" magic that binds him to his current kingdom. Which is good, since it allows him to sense the Mage Storms as the come, locate Nodes that could go bad during the storm, as well as having the added effect of getting Iftel to drop its shield wall and send Envoys to Hardorn, which winds up being the one really big reveal in the book. Indeed, Solaris's reaction to the envoys is priceless.

In Jokona, Tremane former rival Melles is appointed Heir, and starts making moves to control what parts of the Empire aren't already in revolt after the complete failure of magic during the storms. Melles is mainly using the rather horrible philosophy that people value safety over freedom. In the process, Melles also finds out that Emperor Charlis really did stab Tremane in the back after sending him to Hardorn, which Melles uses as part of a campaign to get the Army under his control.

In the tower, pretty much every not quite deity (Avatars of the Goddess, representatives of Vkandis, Companions, Vanyel, Stefan, and Yfandes' ghosts, the Mage sword Need) shows up for the finale, Most of which requires Altra the firecat to use his Jumping ability to go fetch a few of them.

In the end, a Second Cataclysm  is prevented, but not without cost on everyone's parts.

Out of all of her Valdemar series, this is likely the best of the "Modern" setting she wrote. Not that the rest are inferior products, but more that she had a better grasp on the world she created and how to narrat eit by this point.