The cataclysm has been averted, the alfar defeated. But even in their defeat, and after the devastation that their wars created, they remain a powerful race. Aiphaton, erstwhile Emperor of the alfar is on a personal mission to extinguish his race for the crimes they have committed, but the alfar face an enemy even greater than their former Emperor, one which threatens all the races of the Hidden Land...

Raging Storm: The Legends of the Alfar: Book IV (2019. 506 pages) is the last in this particular series of books, written by German author Markus Heitz. The novel was translated by Sorcha McDonagh.

Heitz has written extensively in this his created world. First in his The Dawrves series and now on The Alfar. He is the recipient of 2003 Deuttscher Phantastik Preis for his first series.

This is a very dense novel, so it would be madness to pick up this book and think it works well as a standalone story. True, Heitz does what he can to fill in some gaps, but as the culmination of the previous six novels, there is much that is taken as known.

The story has an extensive dramatis personae, so it was nice to see a list of all the characters at the beginning of the book.

Heitz was obviously going for the whole Tolkien experience and fans of Tolkien will not feel out of place here. The only down side is that he has leant more towards The Silmarillion than he has The Lord of the Rings with his generous use of accented letter. Half the time I had no idea of how to pronounce character names, which continually pulled me out of the story. I would presume that this would not be an issue for a native German speaker.

Heitz is at his greatest strength with both his character portrayals and his descriptions of battles scenes, of which there are many. He provides a suitably epic and satisfying conclusion to this part of the story although I would suspect that there is another trilogy around the corner.

Densely baroque in its complexity it should please fans, but it’s not a place to start the series.

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Charles Packer