Book 1, The Riddle-Master of Hed, begins with Morgon, Prince of Hed, finding out that the golden crown he won in a riddling contest with a ghost is a token. The King of An has sworn that his daughter Raederle will marry no one but the man who can present that crown. Morgon leaves his country for An and the princess. Things happen on the way, dangerous riddles and mysteries appear, and he re-aims his quest instead at finding answers to those.

Book 2, Heir of Sea and Fire, starts a year later. Morgon has been missing for that entire year. Through a kind of land-magic his brother knows that Morgon is still alive. Princess Raederle goes off on a quest of her own to find Morgon, together with Morgon’s sister and another princess.

In book 3, Harpist in the Wind, Morgon and Raederle set out together to figure out what’s going on with all the wizards and shape-changers and other assorted dangers in the realm. Throughout all three books, Morgon gradually gains magic but loses much of his carefree innocence and becomes ever grimmer and harder.

There were aspects of the books that I liked. The poetic prose, the sometimes dreamy quality of the story, the nature scenes with bare moors and endless pine forests. The world itself, with its riddles and strange magics and long-lived kings who all seem to be friends with each other. But the more I read, the more annoyance started to outweigh enjoyment.

Already in book 2 the story gets too unrealistic for my taste. Three young princesses somehow decide that running off to rescue a prince is the most logical thing to do – even though two of the three have barely left their homes before this. And this story is told entirely seriously, there is rarely even a touch of humour.

I realize I sound a bit snarky here, but the whole idea just feels so contrived and stupidly heroic, in the worst sense of heroic. If you love someone, of course you should run off to find and rescue him, even though you have no clue what you’re doing! Your love will be enough!

The whole world is all so noble and poetic. People aren’t real people but… what’s the opposite of a caricature? Symbols, perhaps. They fulfil a role in the story, but I never get the sense that they are real people with real lives. I can almost feel them posing in ther dramatic settings to quietly utter portentous phrases.

People in these books swear grand oaths and commit themselves (and others!) to radical action with very little thought. Princess Raederle eloquently swears that she will never abandon her beloved prince Morgon and is determined to follow him wherever he goes, and that is somehow presented as a noble thing, even though she slows him down and puts him in danger all the effing time. He needs to get from A to B, and B is a long way away. She isn’t much of a walker, but she refuses to use her magic to change into a bird (although she could) and she also won’t let Morgon to change into a horse and carry her (although he could), because that would go against her feelings of what is right.

I also really dislike the amount of fate and destiny in this series, and how much Morgon is being pushed by mysterious forces towards a grand goal. Someone has A Grand Plan, and poor Morgon’s story is mostly about following that plan while simultaneously struggling against it and trying to understand it.

Some of all this pushing is more visible to us than to Morgon. But other things are just left as unexplainable fate. For example, Morgon has three stars on his brow that early on turn out to be signs of his grand and dangerous destiny. But even by the end of the story we have no idea how the stars got there, or why it should be him and nobody else. I have a really, really hard time accepting this level of hand-wavy “it just is like that” predestination in a story.

Around the middle of book 2 I realized that this series was not for me, and speed-read it to the end just to find out how it ends and confirm my suspicions about some of the plot points. By the end I almost actively disliked the meandering, dragged-out story. Even the poetic prose and endless lyrical similes started to grate and feel quite overdone.

I was extra disappointed because I came to this book so ready to love it, after The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.