In the third and final book of David Niall Wilson's "The Grail's Covenant" trilogy, the author carried through the majority of the book a strong anticipation of the final resolution and increasingly certain triumph of his antihero's quest. The quality of the work up to the climax of the series did not flag for even a moment, and until that point this book was every bit as absorbing as the previous two.

Unfortunately, a very abrupt, anticlimactic, surprising ending came out of nowhere as though a complete novel had been written, then the author decided to unceremoniously chop the last few chapters off the end with a cleaver and reverse the sense of the original ending in the space of a few pages. It fit so poorly with the story and plot that had progressed through three books so far that it seemed obviously imposed from outside by the game company that had commissioned these novels, which makes sense given this trilogy and another (Gherbod Fleming's "The Blood Curse" trilogy, a badly inferior effort as a sequel to Wilson's trilogy) were marketed as intimately linked, the other following this one to flesh out the storyline beyond where Wilson's trilogy ended.

With that in mind, one might excuse the ending of To Dream of Dreamers Lost as a cliffhanger to be resolved with the integration of two storylines in the next trilogy. Unfortunately, the "integration" and "resolution" turned out to be a few pages of another author taking a steaming dump on the unfinished business of "The Grail's Covenant" before wandering off to tell an essentially unrelated and deeply uninteresting story about some annoying dork with no qualities inspiring any sympathy from me at all.

The ending of this book demands a reduction in rating from the previous books, which is why the first two books in "The Grail's Covenant" get five stars and To Dream of Dreamers Lost gets only four. The reason it does not get even lower marks is the fact it is otherwise an incredibly well-crafted novel, like its predecessors.

This trilogy desperately needs Wilson to revisit it to produce a "Director's Cut" version of the climax-through-denouement. ( )