An Echo of Things to Come
The Licanius Trilogy Book Two
By James Islington
As shadows rise, a darkness awakes
An amnesty has been declared for all Augurs – finally allowing them to emerge from hiding and openly oppose the dark forces massing against Andarra.
However, as Davian and his new allies hurry north towards the ever-weakening Boundary, fresh horrors along their path suggest that their reprieve may have come far too late.
Meanwhile, Caeden continues to wrestle with the impossibly heavy burdens of his past. Yet as more and more of his memories return, he begins to realise that the motivations of the two sides in this ancient war may not be as clear-cut as they first seemed . . .
608 pages
Published by Oribt
Published on January 30, 2018
Author’s webpage
Buy the book
I purchased this book.
An Echo of Things to Come is a big book. Huge. Which is just my cup of tea. Second book in the Licanius Trilogy there were actually times that I felt I was reading the final book because SO MUCH HAPPENS; and Islington moves you at an ever increasing pace towards what feels like a conclusion – and it is, of a sort, but it is more the ‘end of act two’ and set up for act three.
Islington does a great job of spreading his wings in this novel and clearly puts into play the lessons learned while writing the first book. The story closely follows the main characters of book one, Davien, Wirr, Asha and Caedan, – and if you have not read that you may be a little lost as there is no hand-holding or rehashing of what’s gone before here. Islington does a masterful job of keeping the readers interest across all four threads with the stories balancing out in a complex dance of wave-like tension, one thread rising while another lowers.
And while each of these stories has interest and merit, the standout – for me – is Caedan’s story.
Caedan’s journey to regain his lost memories is simply marvelous. Islington uses flashbacks to allow Caedan and the reader to live the revelations rather than just reciting them to us dryly. It is a great use of the flashback device (one that often annoys me, but not here). In fact is almost ‘time travel’, given we are looking back over millennia and it deepens the readers understanding of what went before and what is happening now in terms of the current timeline plot.
Davien’s, Wirr’s and Asha’s journeys are no less interesting and serve to anchor the story in the ‘now’. Through their POV’s we see the plans made by Caedan’s alter-ego of the past begin to come to fruition and see firsthand just how the foretelling gift of the Augurs moves players across the story like chess pieces.
The pace really starts to crank up in the final third of the book, all the threads rushing towards their climax – as I said earlier, it often felt as though we were coming to the end of the final book such was the sense of progression in the story. All in all, Islington has written a stellar novel of epic fantasy that ticks many of the boxes for me. I can only see him getting better as he continues his journey as a writer and I am keen to see where he goes next.
An Echo of Things to Come suffers from none of the middle book syndrome that so many other second volumes in a trilogy do. It is a fast paced tale of magic, mysterious, politics, back stabbing and prophecy as we explore the idea of closely our view of identity is molded by our memories. And while Islington does use many familiar tropes he is also using a very cool device with Caedan (no, not the flashbacks) that I do not believe has been widely used in epic fantasy before and offers a very really feeling of ‘something new’. If you are a fan of Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson you will surely love this.
