Kosar's departure brings me to the first of Dawn's weaknesses. In Dusk, Lebbon skilfully negotiated the tricky path between the small and the large, the lives of individuals and the fate of the world. Now, as the story moves deeper into the battle for Noreela's future, that path becomes more precarious -- and the author stumbles. At the end of the previous volume, Lebbon cleverly pruned his central team of companions in a way that would maximize friction between the survivors. In what seems to me a lost opportunity, he now splits them up to continue the journey on their own (which is necessary for his denouement). Other characters do join them, including the Red Monk Lucien Malini (between whom and Kosar there most certainly is friction, to put it very mildly); but there just isn't the same sense of character development that there was in Dusk -- which there surely would have been if the protagonists were spending more of the plot together.

There are problems on the side of the Mages, too. S'Hivez and Angel have great power: they're "like holes punched in reality" and they can punch holes in reality themselves. Average Noreelans can't stop them, and there's the rub, because what's the point of depicting rout after rout? It's not until the latter stages of the book, when the Mages' forces come up against the more substantial opposition of the Shantasi, that Lebbon can write battle scenes with genuine tension and drama (and, make no mistake, he does so). This is one the eternal problems faced by high-fantasy authors writing about beings of great supernatural power, and, in the end, Lebbon tackles it pretty well.

I commented in my review of Dusk that high fantasies are easier to begin than to end: it's all too easy to have your characters fiddle about with a few plot coupons (to use Nick Lowe's marvelous term) and -- presto! -- the bad guys are defeated. To his credit, Lebbon doesn't do this; but he does go too far in the opposite direction. The protagonists don't best the Mages: in effect, the world of Noreela does it for them, and all they have to do is what they're told.

Except they're not told all that much. In his efforts to preserve Noreela's mystery, Lebbon keeps his characters in the dark as to why they're doing what they're doing, and how they know what they need to do. They head to the strange region of Kang Kang in the south, but only because the librarian Alishia (who, having been possessed by a shade in the previous volume, has now become some sort of vessel for magic and is growing younger -- and she was young to begin with -- whilst searching through a library in her dreams) feels they should. It almost made me wish for the clarity of being told at the outset, "you must collect X, Y and Z and this is where they are" -- at least then there's a more solid reason for roaming across the map.

And when the characters reach their destination, they just... know what to do. They become Noreela's pawns, with all the agency that implies (in the words of Trey, "Whatever I do, it's destined to be"). It would be a far more satisfying resolution if the protagonists had to think more about how to defeat the Mages.

However, I would not wish to imply that a story that adheres rigidly to conventions is better than one that breaks them. I'd much rather read something that tries to push boundaries, even if it doesn't quite get there. Lebbon has shaken up high fantasy with his duology, and it was a pleasure to read. As he comments in Dawn, "there [are] a billion different stories in Noreela"; and, indeed, this series tells just one of them. He's announced there will be more, and that's welcome news.