Review - Ithani by J. Scott Coatsworth

The Ithani are waking up. The ancient race that split their world between two universes, creating Oberon and Titania, have slept for more than a hundred thousand years. Their power-mad ruler is none too happy about the “aliens” that now occupy his world. If they are to save the planet they call home, humans and skythane must work together to solve the riddle of how it all came to be. Xander, Jameson, Quince, Robyn and their friends scramble to solve the mystery before their world can end.

This final book of the Oberon Cycle is almost more mystery than science fiction. The puzzle revolves around the first human inhabitants of Oberon, and how the skythane evolved from them. Like the previous book, Lander, this volume is told from multiple points of view, as the large cast of characters continue to split up to pursue various leads.

That large cast of characters may prove to be an issue for some readers. There are eight to ten individuals that play key roles in the story, and it’s a task keeping track of who is who. Almost all of the players were introduced in the previous books, so I didn’t find it too difficult to keep track of them. Each is a distinct personality that we get to know a little better in this last episode.

In some ways, I can see how the large number of characters is needed to unravel the rather complicated mysteries of the plot. In the end, it all makes sense, but it takes each of the personalities exploring a different avenue to arrive at the final explanation.

Although I had some doubts about the series after the way the first book ended, I’m glad I went on to read the subsequent two books, which pretty much redeemed the iffy ending of the first volume. To the author’s credit, they do suggest in their forward of this installment that they would have liked to have gone back and changed some things in the earlier books, which had already been published before the final installment was written.

“Ithani” is available from Amazon.