Review for The Red Winter and The Tapestry Series by Henry Neff

"Be brave. Today we must all be heroes." 



Rating: 3 stars

The Hound of Rowan: 3 stars
The Second Siege: 3.5 stars
The Fiend and the Forge: 3.75 stars
The Maelstrom: 3.75 stars

So The Tapestry is finally over! And when I say that, I do indeed mean I was waiting for it to end. For most of the series, I never felt bored. I enjoyed my time reading, which is why the books in this series have been rated relatively high for number of problems I have with each book. But this one. This one was rough. The pages are just filled with large paragraphs of description. By about 50% of the way through, I wanted to be done. I decided to stick it out because I'm not one to DNF a series in the last half of the last book. But it was rough.
I expected to rate this book much higher, and for the first 20% of the book I was in the 4-4.5 star range. And then the book just kept dragging on. The characters and their interactions are so much better than they were in the beginning of the series and I really appreciate that. BUT, now the plot is dragging. I think one reason for this is that the series did not need to be five books long. Cutting out some of the unnecessary stuff, this series could have been a really good fantasy trilogy. And THIS stems from the fact that the plot was too layered. By this, I mean that there were too many antagonists and diverging storylines. Prusias's defeat at the Battle of Blys couldn't even feel like a success because we went right into the problem of Astaroth. Prusias was the main antagonist in most of books 3-4, and his defeat was just skimmed over. I really wish the series had cut out Prusias entirely, made Astaroth the main antagonist, and wrapped this all up in three books. It would have been more focused and overall better quality. Going off of this, I felt Astaroth's defeat was very underwhelming, and it's probably because he had to share the spotlight with Prusias.

When the firestorm had passed, all that remained was the god.

Here's our other problem: the hype around Max's powers. I've mentioned this in almost every review for this series. Max has some giant god-like power-up like twice a book. It gets repetitive, and it's hard to find realistic that he just continues to get more and more powerful. There are so many quotes like the one mentioned above; it just got ridiculous.

As for the series as a whole:
I've already mentioned in this review some problems, which I retain for the entire series. In the beginning books, there were problems with the characters and their interactions, but this did improve with each book.
One thing that bugs me immensely is that none of the books seem to have a specific plot. It's like the whole series could have been one massive book. Each book just picks up where the last one left off and continues with events that happen. There isn't a specific goal for each book, just the overall goal of defeating Prusias/Astaroth which of course doesn't happen until the end of the last book.
One thing that exacerbates this issue is the timing of the books. It drove me crazy that I never knew how much time had gone by at any given moment, and especially regarding the characters' ages. We only got vague descriptions like "Max was no longer the little boy he used to be, but was now a strapping young man". The books should have been year after year with clear time stamps; that would have at least helped me see a clear progression of events and conflict. I think the author wanted this series to be a middle-grade-into-young-adult series, but it became too rushed. 8 years pass in 5 books, and I don't know how! Part of this I suppose is due to the weird Sidh time from book 2, but even so the timing is honestly one of the series' biggest faults IMO.
I like this series because it has magic, action, and wonderful creatures. It blends many different kinds of mythologies to make a really original story. I definitely recommend this book to younger fantasy audiences. If you love middle grade fantasy, you will probably like this. But if you're looking for a series where everything fits together perfectly and the characters are really strong, I would say that this series is not for you.