Hammer of God

Genuinely disappointing in the way that only a favorite childhood author could be. The themes of the racial and cultural superiority of Europeans over other peoples made my stomach churn. The revelation that Mijak's God was inherently evil and misleading the people of Mijak whereas the God of the rest of the world was righteous even as it came in many forms was incoherent. Hekat, Vortka, and Dimitrak were simply flanderized to single character traits and wasted through the second and third books. Virtually no characters had any arc to speak of in this last part. The idea that they needed the help of a European who had never even been to Mijak to tell that people about how to worship God properly even as he spent the last two books literally calling them barbaric. Just disgusting.

Also, just a fundamental worldbuilding sin: after the first book, she started referring to Mijak's God by a different name when Zandakar was speaking to people with a different native language. But the Ethreans are basically described as speaking English, so we never learn a different word for Ethrea's God, let alone the gods of the other nations. Once again, Mijak is separated not just as an antagonist but as a conceptual inferior. Bah.

"Empress" on its own was an OK thought experiment and tragedy, although the Point of it is kind of up in the air. After that, the story of the second and third books was a plodding political drama that only got more offensive as it continued and centered faux-Europeans.

Really hope Karen Miller comes back to finish "Tarnished Crown" in some form, because I do really like her writing generally. But I hope she knows in her bones that doing this as a trilogy was a mistake.