Nightlord: Orb (3) Hardcover – June 1, 2016

So I loved the first book, it was awesome a true pleasure to read. I liked the second book, some problems like the characters dimness at the end aside it was an enjoyable read.As for this one, well hell ... I don't even know what to say.So the score. I started at five and here is my reasoningLets start with the positiveThe start is pretty good. It shows how he is rescued and some of the fallout from the time he was the Demon king. I liked this and I honestly think it is the potential of the start that got me through the rest of the book, hoping it would manage to live up to it. The rescue was comprehensive, the characters reacted well, and even the protagonists actions were reasonable.His escape afterward was well thought out and his goals and actions afterward were mostly rational and positive, even the ones that weren't were not jarring within the context of what he had gone through. Hell he even displayed some cleverness and cunning. +1 StarNext the side and secondary characters. They were good, far better then he was, not just cardboard cutouts. Fleshed out with personalities, goals, fears, and flaws. I especially liked Mary and the Four. + 1 StarNow for the bad.First the continuity errors. This book much like book 2 is plagued by numerous minor continuity errors. None are really bad, really most don't make much difference and can ignored but a few cause fairly significant changes in the plot. For example the wards against scrying and location spells.In book 1 he made a spell that made him immune to scrying and location spells, none of the magic users of the time could beat it. However for book 2 this spell was simply not mentioned and he had to relearn a very similar one that was abit less effective but still incredibly good. In book 3 he has apparently forgotten both spells yet again and in spite of being tracked and hunted throughout most of the book he never uses either or tries to develop a new one. Instead he spends his time developing spells to do such things as make his food taste better (While being imprisoned and tortured no less). -1 StarNothing gets resolved in this book. There are a lot of things going on in this book and left over from the last and none get resolved. The story almost aggressively avoids resolving things, to the point of absurdity.For instance the demon who stole his body and ruined his relationships, kingdom, made a mockery of everything he stood for, and oh yeah stole his life imprisoning him in his own little hell. You know who could conceivably take his body back and do it all again. You would think dealing with that on a permanent basis would be a priority right? You would be wrong, painfully wrong. This is far from the only example of this.This is weird to say about a book this massive, but it felt like half a book. -1 StarThe protagonist is stupid. He doesn't start the story stupid, I mean he doesn't start out smart either but his intelligence is fairly reasonable. It is at least not low enough to bring the story down. That distinction doesn't last long though I'm afraid. It seems that after you get passed the first few chapters he slowly but steadily gets stupider with each and every page.Do you remember the end of the last book? It was bad, not because he lost, or something bad happened to him, not even because he was tricked. It was bad because he ignored every clue, every hint, every bit of evidence. He ignored everything that he knew was wrong and strange about the whole thing, till the last part where he embraced a level of stupidity that made it seem like he almost conspired with the demon to get his body stolen. The worst part of book two hands down, remember that?He gets to that level of stupidity about 2/3rds of the way through this book and keeps heading down. It's painful to read. To the books credit the other characters even comment on it, going on to give him advice of various levels of usefulness but all still far better anything he does. Hell even the sword that only wants to kill everything and burn it down has better ideas then him.By the end a mentally impaired lemming who was then lobotomized would be smarter and would make better decisions then Halar was doing. This was so bad I have to take away two. -2 StarsNow the ending. So the ending is capped out with a cliffhanger action so massively stupid I'm honestly without words. Now I know you probably thinking, but you already mentioned nothing is resolved and that the character is stupid. You are right but the ending is such an important part of a story and culminates everything wrong with the story so I felt it merited special mention.Its like it took everything wrong with the end of the second story and went "Gee that was awesome, I need to double down on that". And to my horror it did. -1 StarSo there you have it. In summary the story was a rather large disappointment for me.

As much as I don't like his tangents, I do learn things. Mary is great at curbing these. She is good for Halar. I can not wait to see what happens next.

This is my first review, and I normally don’t bother, but this time I am just annoyed enough to pull out my laptop and start writing.If you are reading this, the you probably read the last two books, and if you didn’t enjoy the monumental cliffhanger book two ended on, then I don’t recommend you read this one either. Again we end on a cliffhanger and again the character ends up in a bad situation, because he gets a bad case of plot convenient stupidity. And I don’t mean a slight case of stupid either, I mean: “why in the ever-loving universe would you ever do that”. Then again you might enjoy a cliffhanger or chose to overlook it because you enjoy the universe or the character. In that case, this book will also disappoint you.I liked the character in the last book, until the end of the book he was fun, smart and had some agency. In short he got things done and the writing was funny.In this book, that is gone. Nothing major happens in this book and all that agency he had before is now gone. The character just reacts to things. Every time, EVERY SINGLE TIME, he starts to think about doing something proactive he thinks better of it or gets distracted. He acts less smart as well, and no “mister author” you don’t get to hang a lampshade om that and then leave it be. Arbitrarily making your character stupid does not make for an enjoyable read, if that was what made him fun in the first place.Now it isn’t all bad, the writing is still funny in places, and the protagonist gets to be badass a few times, which is why it gets two stars. But, by the end of the book, nothing had been resolved and I could see the writer winding up to another cliffhanger. By the last 50 pages or so I was just waiting for it, and it was just as bad as the last book. It seems to be a theme with this writer. A cliffhanger can be fun, it can be surprising and it can leave you anticipating the next book with baited breath. Garon Whited doesn’t do cliffhangers well, it isn’t surprising, it isn’t fun and I don’t expect the protagonist to get out of it in a clever way, since the Deus ex machina is literally hinted at by the end. In short, spare yourself the aggravation and skip it.***Minor Spoiler***An example of why this book annoys me: At one point near the end the character get captured, and is left alone for hours on end. Now you would think he would be planning his escape, right? Nope, he spends the time perfecting a spell meant to make his horse faster and making curry taste less strong. This is not because he is confident of his escape, no he just thinks it’s a better use of his time. And this gets repeated over and over in the book, every time you would think the main character would maybe focus on something, he gets distracted and goes off on a tangent, even when it makes no damn sense.I do apologize for the spelling. English is not my first language. Thank you for your time and I hope this review was helpful.

Okay, I like a lot of this series but there are some really creepy bits and not in a good way. First, even though the MC is always going on about how protective he is about children he turns a blind eye to child abuse instead of using any of his numerous skills that could help. A person with no power at all could simply call the authorities. Geez. Then there is the whole you were basically my adoptive daughter and now I shag you situation. Then a scene were he bathes with his teenage granddaughter and she makes a comment about how hard it would be to find a better man than him while peering into the water of his side of the tub’s water. WTF!!!!! This author is very creative and much of the series is an enjoyable read even though the MC has some really messed up priorities and does some majorly stupid things it is worth the read but the creepy things with children and incest stuff needs to stop. Someone should have questioned the whole bathtub thing with the granddaughter at the very least when this was being narrated or edited. Just ick. Double ick.

I really like this series, the plots and mysteries are great, the characters are likeable, though have very little time spent on them. So much time is spent on inner monologue, halar constantly questioning theories, ideas, the universe, the magical universe, physics, quantum physics, mathematical theories, etc. That you forget what the story was about or what he was doing before he started explaining how a spell works and why he wants it..

OK.. first of all, if you have not read the first 2 then STOP!Get them in order and it all makes much more sense.Secondly... see my review of book 5, no spoilers.Thirdly.. I can agree in some way with some earlier reviewers, this may not be the best in the series, but.. it does contain things that are relevant in the next. Maybe a little bit heavy in places, but, with books the size this author turns out, you can be excused for skim reading the occasional paragraph or two, and still have plenty left.Keep going and and I assure you it is worth it ;-)

I guess this will be mostly read by people who have read the first two nightlord books, if you haven't then buy them first and do the series in order. You'll thank me later.Book three carries on at the breakneck pace of the first two. There are plot twists aplenty, great new characters and a whole gamut of foes for our protagonist to interact with/eat. The pages simply fly by carrying you to a wholly unexpected end game.I'm not a fan of talking about plots in reviews, always worried about spoilers. Just immerse yourself in the universe(s) of Garon Whited and revel in Eric's unique approach to situations that rock his world.The answer isn't 42.

I am going to slog through this book, because I read that book 4 is back to form.That said, this is very weak. For long stretches, nothing happens. Major plot points that were previously resolved (Beryl's fate for example) - are forgotten. The protagonist becomes very weak and stupid for most of the book.Anyway, there's a lot wrong with this book. In hindsight I'd prefer to read/listen to a synopsis and go to book 4.

Yet another triumph - love this series. Big meaty story, loads of twists and turns - just a shame we have to wait for the next one!

This is probably the most interesting series I have read in a while. Garon Whited is obviously influenced in various degrees by J.R.R. Tolkien and Douglas Adams (Who I met when working on a project for him and Kevin Davies). In his words, "I've always thought comedy science fiction was something people would relate to". Anyway back to the series. I read Luna first and then was so interested in the author I dipped into the Nightlord series. Of course you can never really dip into something. It is either ignore or a full dive at least in my experience of literary gluttony. The explanations of all the processes may become boring to some and even I have skipped a paragraph or three. Yet it is the essence of the process with this particular storyteller. It also lends a legitimacy to the fantasy. A marriage of science and fantasy has never been so well observed. This is a unique experience for the reader. The explanations blow the lid off historical notions of vampires and magic but in a way that makes perfect sense. The character development is deeply revealing as is the multiple layers to the story. Parallel storytelling is almost non existent which helps simplify the complexity and depends completely on a single view which for me is at least, refreshing. If you don't like a cliffhanger ending then be prepared that this will happen in this installment but it didn't bother me as all aspects of this series has cliffhanger aspects sewn in. This installment is my least favourite of the three as it seemed to get lost within itself and the protagonist was below par in logical thinking processes. My review is more of the series as a whole. The length of each book is generous and it has taken quite a commitment of time to get this far quickly. I am pleased to have time to spend some time cooling down as Bronze needs after a speedy journey. I recommend this book and series due to its uniqueness and compelling storyline. An epic that even Tolkien himself would have appreciated.