i really kinda loved this series of five books (the writer later co-authored the excellent sf series The Expanse). although it was still classic epic fantasy, the characters and their skillsets were very much not standard issue, from the banker heroine to the socialite who becomes a spy, and from the once-renowned soldier who won't work for kings to the itinerant acting troupe. separately and together they fight a different kind of war, set up millennia ago by the dragons who designed all thirteen races before they disappeared, and ultimately they opt to create a different world. along the way, after getting to know them all so intimately (even the villain has his well-established point of view) it just becomes impossible not to get drawn in. ( )

Final volume in The Dagger and the Coin, which has the great feature of starring a banker as the main character and exploring the role of finance in war. But mostly this one is about the final war against the spider priests and the attempt to save humanity both from the spiders and the last dragon, who would prefer that they were all his slaves again. It refuses easy villains or heroes and is otherwise a relatively satisfying conclusion, though there are deliberate loose ends/other things will clearly happen to those of the characters who are still alive. ( )

Despite my best intentions, it took me over four years to come to the conclusion of this five-book saga, mostly because other titles kept distracting me from the goal, but now that I have finally reached the end I can say it was a very engaging and very satisfying read.

The central theme of the series, as indicated by its name, is the duality of power: exerted by armies on one side and by the laws of economy on the other, in a constantly shifting tug-of-war that in the course of the whole story sees lands ravaged by conflict and struggling to resurface from its devastation.

As the previous book, The Widow’s House, reached its end, the army from Antea was continuing its campaign of conquest and annexation under the banner of the Spider Goddess: Geder Palliako, the former nobody risen to the position of Regent for young Antean king Aster, still trusts the counsel of priest Basrahip but at the same time is unable to deny any longer the inner turmoil that comes from the realization that Antea is dealing with a war on too many fronts, and that even the evil power of persuasion of the priests’ voices can do little for tired, overtaxed and ill-supplied soldiers.

Geder’s adversaries - Cithrin bel Sarcour and the Medan bank; former mercenary Marcus Wester; Clara Kalliam, the widow of one of Geder’s first political victims, just to name a few - are pooling their forces to try and overthrow the Antean invasion and defeat the Goddess’ masterminds. It’s a multi-pronged assault, one which sees Cithrin on one side concocting a daring scheme based on “war gold”, which is nothing more than the invention of paper currency, and Marcus on the other planning to use the last surviving dragon, Inys, to strike the final blow. Clara, for her part, plays a subtle and dangerous double game from inside the enemy’s lines as the conspirators set up a daring scheme that involves suborning Geder himself.

It’s hard to summarize a story that has been running for five books and which sees here, in its final installment, a series of twists and turns that flow into a hair-raising epilogue - one that includes a dragon breathing fire and destruction - and to say the truth, the story itself looks less important than the characters driving it: throughout the series we saw these characters change - some for the best, some for the very worst - and the focus on their struggles always held my attention more than anything else. Daniel Abraham’s characters feel like flesh-and-blood people and particularly in this last book I felt myself invested in their individual journeys and I enjoyed the author’s way of not closing neatly those journeys but rather showing that they still had a long road to travel, even though it’s not one we will be able to follow.

Marcus Wester might be the archetype of the tired warrior carrying a painful baggage from his past, and at times he looked nothing more than that, but in the end he comes across as much more through his interactions with other characters, like Master Kit, the former spider priest turned actor, or like Yardem Hane, fellow soldier and laconic “conscience” whose sparsely worded replies have been a constant source of delightful humor throughout the story. Wester’s steadfastness is one of the rocks on which Cithrin’s growth can stand: from scared girl saddled with an important assignment to confident banker able to make or break the destinies of a country, Cithrin is the coin to Wester’s dagger, just as their dealings are the representation of the series’ dual view of the world.

My sympathies, however, have mostly focused on Clara Kalliam: I’ve been fascinated with her character from her appearance in the first book, and her elevation to POV figure made me quite happy because this lady is one of the players who enjoys the best focus in the course of the saga. At the start of her story-arc she is the accomplished wife and mother, the quiet, unassuming strength behind her husband’s power, and she fully comes to her real potential only by passing through the fire of tragedy and loss: far from diminishing her, the downfall allows her to shed the chains of convention and to play different roles - behind-the-scenes politician, revolutionary, spy - all the while hiding behind the masks of court socialite or frail old woman, and setting in motion many of the events that ultimately change the course of history.

The theme of roleplaying is indeed a recurrent one in The Dagger and the Coin: although some real actors are actual characters in the story, and their leader Master Kit is quite proficient at hiding in plain sight, everyone sooner or later must play a role - or many - and not just Clara. Cithrin starts by pretending to be older and more accomplished than she is, and then goes on affecting a brash certainty she does not possess; Marcus Wester charms Inys by feigning submission, and so on. In this world where the Goddess’ priests are able to detect lies, deception requires subtlety and often means walking on a tightrope over the abyss…

And then there is Geder: I don’t remember changing my mind about a fictional character as much as I did for Geder - where at first he elicited my sympathies, given how he started his journey as the proverbial fish out of water, his personality took some unexpected directions that made him loathsome. If he had simply turned into a villain, it would have been easy to hate him outright, but even when he is responsible for the worst atrocities, he finds a way to justify those choices as necessary and unavoidable, showing that he is as much a victim of circumstances as he is their enabler - a willing pawn, granted, but one who clearly enjoys the better consequences of those choices…. Here in The Spider’s War he goes way overboard, burning away any remaining dregs of pity I might have harbored because of his past: his desire for recognition, for respect, and the price he’s ready to pay to get them, turned him into a monster - a bumbling, insecure and troubled one, true, but still a monster. And for this very reason the way his narrative journey ends does not feel completely believable: I can’t say much about it because I want to avoid spoilers, but to me what happens does not have the “flavor” of an organic development.

This dissonance, and the way the ending winds down - almost with the proverbial whimper instead of the expected “bang” - are the reasons I can’t rate this final book as high as its predecessors, although I still consider The Dagger and the Coin one of the best fantasy series I have read so far, and Daniel Abraham as a very, very accomplished author. ( )

The five-book series resolves in an unexpected way — but I feel all the things I was most interested in weren't actually resolved at all. The author has said he won't be revisiting the series, so I feel a little disappointed — and a little wanting, after some developments the series spent five books building up to turned out to have less impact on the ur-plot than expected.

I give the series credit for turning away from a crush-the-enemy resolution. But the characters, who were the most interesting part of the series besides its epistemology, turned out unevenly.

Plot-wise, Cithrin ended up as the prime mover in the final book. But character-wise I felt like she didn't develop very much, in the series or the book. And her big banking innovation was actually less significant than the end of the previous book suggested. It didn't really affect the end of the Antean War in any significant way; rather, its impacts were left for the reader to imagine about the series' future. (And the characters' belief that "war gold" would be a tool for peace and prosperity is over-optimistic at best, as anyone familiar with episodes like the Mississippi Scheme or with the controversy of the Bank of England could attest.)

Marcus also stayed largely the same, but the book at least got him one very cool climactic moment that built naturally on the whole series. So I appreciate that and have few complaints for a character who was always a second-tier viewpoint character.

It was Geder, always (intentionally) a more reactive character than people perceived him to be, who was the most interesting. The series' conclusion retrospectively placed him as its key character — the story of the rise and fall of a pathetic but brutal tyrant, who was partially manipulated down dark paths but in large part entirely culpable.

(Also retrospectively fascinating: Dawson, as a character who was right for the wrong reasons.)

I still love this series despite the nits I've picked in these reviews. But I recognize that my affection is driven most of all by the author's themes, which happen to mesh perfectly with my own intellectual areas of interest. As an adventure story "The Dagger and the Coin" is enjoyable but not on the level of superlative fantasy series like "A Song of Ice and Fire." Abraham probably wouldn't disagree. ( )

A fine finish to a great series.

Alas, the series ends here. It grew a little slow around the halfway mark, then rammed its way to the end in a blazing path of glory. ( )