Customer Reviews

The Chaos Crystal

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Chaos Crystal.

I read 3 books to get to this and was so disappointed.

All this reading and it's like the author just couldn't give a damn what happened, she just wanted to wrap up the story.
So many things wrong with this fourth book, from repeating the same story over and over from varying characters perspectives, giving away the juicy plot point (the whole rift idea) early in the beginning, to the horrible ending where the world you'd come to love and characters you'd thought were decent are destroyed by monstrous characters you never really cared about because they were so unlikeable.

And then there is the Arkady phenonemon. 'Thank you' for the thorough explanation as to her sudden reappearance and immortality?! Why isn't this explained? It's the end of the book and you can't just leave it like that and expect the reader to be satisfied with a cliffhanger ending that is never going to be resolved and that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever! How is she immortal now, how, how, HOW? Yes we can speculate, but that's not how these things work, they need to make legitmate sense when we have been reading these books and come to understand YOUR rules as to what laws govern the realities of this universe you created. It's a terrible cop out to quickly sum up a book, just to give it an ending that works in your head but certainly not the readers.

Such a tragic disappointment to someone who loves fantasy and especially Aussie fantasy writers.

I know writing books is hard, but you just can't do this to your readers, no matter how confident you feel of your style. We dedicated our imaginations and time to your story and you give us this really, really bad ending that kinda makes me angry and so disheartened.

The first three books were quite good so thankyou for allowing my imagination to see these worlds and characters and fascinating ideas of immortality and how people would deal with it, but the fourth is a failure and thus ruins the series.

Thankyou for writing the first three, but you shouldn't have written the fourth as you did, you should have known better and you should have just not written it if it was going to be like this or at least spent more time getting it right.

So sad it sucked.
oh well. Thankyou, but Next..

Be warned: This book does not follow the steps of the previous 3.

3,5 stars in my opinion

The story turns blacker, the good and bad guys don't always get what they deserve,
and all immortals appear to act selfishly and calculating. Everyone has an agenda. The good guys do not act noble and even when they do, the results of their actions are often devastating due to incomplete information as
[Spoilers]
for example Arkady's father suicidal behavior, Arkady knifing the Warlord, and Warlord's devastation of the world (to what degree is left open) the matters move too fast at the last chapter, and are somewhat unexpected and unconventional (Arkady is left for some (did I read millions, or was it thousands??) years drifting in space - lost fleet style)...

Not worth the extraordinary price, but worth to be read eventually from anyone who has
followed the story so far. If nothing else it offers much more food for thought about human life and love though less entertainment.

I have been reading this series from start to finish and have devoured and relished each and every word. The Immortal Prince (Tide Lords Quartet)introduced me to Fallon and I have loved all of her work ever since. Every single book in the Tide Lords Saga is a page-turner and I have burned many a midnight oil reading them. The Chaos Crystal was no different. And I have to say that the while I worried about what the conclusion to such an involved story like this might be, I have to say that I should not have been worried. The end, if you wish to call it that, I thought was great considering the genre of story this is and was not altogether unexpected. I've seen that quite a few don't like the ending but I found it amazing, adrenaline-pumping, and probably the perfect "end" when it comes to a story about pantheistisc, all-powerful, hard-hearted immortals who will live thoughout time, with nothing but time on their hands. I say "end" because as you might expect with type of story, she leaves an open ending for the option to write more. I sincerely hope she does, as I truly enjoy the immortals and their journey through eternity.

SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS.......................

This book revealed a lot this time around, from the confirmed realization that Lukys, Maralyce, and the rest of the 5 original immortals are actually not just immortals, but ALIEN immortals. They have actually been world-hopping for millions of years, so long that they have actually visually aged. Once all this is put into perspective, it is realized just how young Cayal and the others are, and that there just is NO WAY to kill these people. After you come to realize that, the ending, and the fact that Amyrantha is doomed, becomes elementary. There are a few plot holes in places, such as what happens to the other immortals left behind on destroyed worlds since even that won't kill them, what happend to Elyssa after Lukys tried to force her into Arkady's body. How did Arkady become immortal? But in the end, you just kinda go along with it, because you're caught up in the moment. It's kinda cool the twist she puts at the end of the immortals making their way to our world, and I love that she has left whether Arkady goes with Declan or Cayal, up to the readers. Arkady's love for Declan was that sappy kinda love back when he had just become immortal, but now that more than 65 million years have gone by, the guy is a different person altogether, and has become a true immortal at heart. Arkady has been asleep all that time, so there's bound to be some clashes, plus she has lost her home and is on a world she has nothing about. Cayal has also grown and changed, and both men love her in their own way. So she could end up with either one, or both, as she is now immortal and has eternity to be with either.

All in all, I love this series and would and will be reading it, again and again.

Unlike a few of the other readers I did not have a problem with the ending of this book. Careful reading and a little imagination would answer their questions as how one of the key characters survived. It would also pay to note that this conclusion to this series leaves a opening for a whole new series if the writer desires. I've read all of the Chaos Chrystal series and found it just as enjoyable and inthralling as any of the books Jennifer Fallon had published.

Ok, so I bought this and was enraptured. So much so that, like an idiot, I bought the other 3 books in this series from Australia (where they are published as of 12/08). Very rich and detailed, full of twists and turns, and political machinations, plus the whim of bored and jaded immortals, hoping for a little bit of entertainment....sounds great, right? Yeah, all the way up to the last 3 chapters of the very last book. The ending of this series was a total cop out! It was sooo wimpy and cliche that I wanted to throw all of the books in the fire place! Maybe, when they are all published in the States, there will be a rewrite of the ending, but if not, scores of people will be disappointed with the attempted wrinkle (which, IMHO, failed completely) at the end of the series. Disappointing, because I really like Jennifer Fallon. She must have run up on a deadline to try to pass of the drivel of the last two paragraphs in what is supposed to be the culmination of this series. Don't say I didn't warn you!