Customer Reviews

Watershed Trilogy 3: War of Three Waters

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

 

 

This book concludes the Watershed trilogy and it has a surprise ending. The end of this trilogy left me wanted more explained and more adventure. I will definately read more books if they ever come out about this so called Watershed and it inhabitants.

For someone who could barely put down the first two books in the trilogy, War of Three Waters was worth reading to finish the series but marginally satisfying on its own merits. Niles had a few fun, original ideas, but overall the plot tends more toward tired cliches and the romance falls flat--the Rudy/Raine, Takian/Bristyn and Danri/Kerri relationships were nearly interchangeable.

I didn't notice the time-of-travel inconsistencies mentioned by another reviewer, but there were a couple of glaring logical mistakes:

1. Rudy and Raine embark on their journey to Agath-Trol with the sword of darkblood, Raine explains to Rudy how to use it to teleport, Rudy comments that this could be useful, and the two proceed to spend the bulk of the book (what amounts to at least a couple of months) trudging around on foot. Coming across a river of lava completely perplexes them. How about actually using the teleporting sword they have in their luggage to speed up the journey before provisions run out? Naaaah...

2. Maybe Niles has never actually seen a dam, but he still should know that they don't stop rivers completely, they just control the flow. Whenever anyone constructs a dam in these books, the sheer force of all the rocks they throw into the river somehow manages to stop the river at its source...or something like that. A real river is going to either start flowing over it or find a new route, not just disappear from the face of the earth as these rivers seem to do. In Niles's world, this plethora of new dams doesn't even seem to create any new lakes.

The fast-paced action and sheer number of scenes Niles manages to include in this book will still please hardcore fans, but this book certainly could have benefited from a more critical editor.

I just finished reading War of Three Waters and let me tell you it is well worht the read. Niles builds such a fine and believable realm it is really a shame to see it come to and end. I read this series with mixed feelings. I wanted to hurry to see what happend next, but at the same time I didn't want it to end. Another fine piece of work from Doulas Niles, and I hope we get to return to the Watershed again.

After reading the final book in another one of Douglas Niles' flawless trilogy, I felt myself wanting more, but also completely satisfied. The story was awesome, and I really wished I could have partook in the whole thing personally. Douglas Niles has made a story with so much emotion behind it, I really got into it and read the final book to this wonderful trilogy in just two days. I suggest anyone who likes DragonLance, or Forgotten Realms, or any fantasy work read this book. Once again, a flawless job on the part of my favorite author.

To end a wonderful trilogy, Douglas niles wrote a magnificent book which kept me from just about doing anything until i finished it. If you didn't read any of this triolgy yet, Go out and buy it now. In israel this book costs $10 and worth them too.

Fine conclusion to a very well-written and compelling fantasy story. First time I've read Douglas Nile, will definitely look for more of his work.

I read all the books in this series. Although the plot is good, and the world is interesting, there were several things that made me really consider stop reading.
First is passing of time is terribly unrealistic. A trip which was taking 2 weeks on foot in the first book cannot take 3 days in the second book. A trip that a brutox takes in a few months is returned in one month or so, etc. There were so many examples of such trip-length inconsistencies that I had to keep forcing myself to overlook these and enjoy the rest of the book.
Fragmentation of parallel events thorughout the books could not be any worse. They are always ending too quickly and the book jumps to the next so your enjoyment of the current event is kept too short. I think the author should look at Dragonlance classics series to see examples of how this should have been done. Also, those events do not occur in a proper time order. When you start reading the next section which writes about some other hero group, you sometimes understand current time should be before the previous section, or timing is much much more unrealistic than you've previously thought (even cases such as a few months trip taken in moments). These are very amateurish in my idea and had a quite bad impact of my enjoyment of the book. Actually I'm pretty surprised how other people rated this book so high.