Spell of Apocalypse

Dance of the Gods #4

by Mayer Alan Brenner

When the Great Karlini’s laboratory catches on fire, Maximillian the Vaguely Disreputable knows it’s a sign of bad things to come. They are: the last battle between gods and mortals is looming; before it does, certain answers must come to light. Just who is the Creeping Sword? Will Shaa free himself from the curse his brother inflicted upon him? And most important of all, who will be left standing? The Dance of Gods concludes in a fast-paced final movement.

“For those who like their fantasy with plenty of adventure and a dollop of humor, I recommend The Dance of Gods.... The frenetic pace keeps things moving ... an intriguing and delightfully funny series.” --Locus

Genres: Fantasy, Ebooks

306 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 1994

Reviews

[Dantegideon · Rating 1 out of 5]

OK, so the first two books are kind of fun and the last two are grimdark. This is my least favourite thing to happen with a series. Up yours, grimdark!

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I'd taken the title seriously. I dislike apocalyptic, and this is it.

To all the faults of the previous books in the series - overly high-flown language, overly complex machinations, occasional odd OCR errors - is added a general darkening as the plot goes on.

It's an interesting world, and I like sword-and-sorcery and was able to enjoy it when it was that, but overall, a bit of a disappointing conclusion to a less-than-outstanding series.

[Mohammad Alamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excelent Story 💕💕💕

[George Polansky · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Conclusion. I waited too long to finish this series and I can't give an honest review. What I remembered followed the story line.

[Jsnows · Rating 5 out of 5]

And so these intertwined tales of intrigue and social upheaval come to and end with a surge of action and the proverbial BANG!

Poetic license aside, I must say that these 2 last books of Dance of the Gods really picked up the pace and kept me glued to them wanting to find out how events developed. This last book did a great job of tying up all the loose ends, at least all the major ones as Jurtan Mont's musical ability was never really explained and I was rather curious about it.


All in all I enjoyed reading the series a lot and, with it's rather different approach to magic, unpredictable plot turns and colourful characters, can't help wondering why it seems to have failed commercially.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Would you like to know the deep, dark secret of this series? The secret is, all the magic is actually run by nanobots which read the user's intentions and then reshape the world accordingly.

Except that really doesn't make any sense, y'know? All that stuff they went through, about gods and coupling and energy conversion and the "second quantum level" and the constant need for energy? Since when do you need nanobots to access the "second quantum level"?

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the last book of a delightful tongue-in-cheek sword and sorcery series. The plotting is intricate, the writing is intelligent and amusing, and the characters are varied and each unique.

I felt like at the ending some of the multiple storylines could have better resolved, so I take off 1 star for that, but overall, it was worth the trouble to request these from library storage vaults.

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Incredibly disappointing last installment. The last quarter of the book is one unsatisfying anti-climax after another. While the world-changing cataclysm itself is not disappointing, everything just falls flat afterward.

[Johnny · Rating 2 out of 5]

The last of the Mayer Alan Brenner books. They were on feedbooks.com and I had to download them to read on the kindle. I read them years ago and thought they were ok. Now that I'm a bit older and wiser, they are still just ok. Guess I was pretty smart all those years ago.

[Michael McDougall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid, slightly tongue in cheek fantasy adventure.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't read the others. Never understood quite what was happening. Still, a fun ole time!