Ascendancy of the Last by Lisa Smedman

With D&D going into the 4th Edition, the Forgotten Realms world of Toril will go forward 100 years. One of the first thing gamers asked is, “What will happen to all the NPCs like the Seven Sisters?”

When Wizard of the Coast (Wotc) said that most of them will not be around, you know that characters are going to start dying on you. That in short is the most important thing that happened in ‘Ascendancy of the Last’. Book three of the Lady Penitent series, ‘Ascendancy of the Last’ will be noted for the death of Qilue, high priestess of Eilistraee and one of the Seven Sisters.

The book basically continue from where ‘Sacrifice of the Widow’ left off. The game between Eilistraee and Lolth is coming to an end and decisions had to be made on the part of Eilistraee. In the end, Eilistraee lost the game to Lolth (as expected) but tainted Lolth’s victory by saving thousands of drow in the process. So how was the book?

Not one of Lisa Smedman’s better works, I’m afraid. I loved the 2 previous books in the series but not this one. The main problem is that due to the book’s size, Lisa Smedman had to rush through a lot of things. How did Q'arlynd’s spell (which didn’t go exactly to plan) remove the taint from the drow? Why did the skin color of the ‘saved’ drow turned from black to dark brown? None of it was explained as the plot jumped at times.

I can only guess this is due to an editor’s pen because they had to set things up for the 4th Ed. That is understandable on a certain level but some of the stuff is just stupid. Dark elves are now dark brown while drow are black? A drow assassin managing to track a teleporting mage all over the Underdark? If you want to set things up in a certain way, you must at least come up with a reasonable explanation for it. Even fantasy lovers like me are not going to accept everything to be under ‘magic’.

Some of the good plots from the previous books were also ignored. The internal power struggles between Vhaeraun’s and Eilistraee's followers was skipped over. I mean how did the superb nightshadows from the previous 2 books suddenly become such idiots? How did Qilue not know she was possessed when she was high priestess of a holy goddess?

I liked a fast pace book as much as the next guy but at times, this book is crazy. I’ll loved to see what Smedmen’s story will be liked if she had another 50-100 more pages to play around with but as it is, ‘Ascendancy of the Last’ is a disappointing finish to what was a good series.