Put Seven in the Series Title, But Then Only Make Six Books

 I know my past reviews of this series have not been great, but that’s because it had so much potential and it just kind of meandered all over the place.  This final book, though, took all of that potential, set it on fire and then stomped on the ashes.  For starters, why name your series The Seventh Tower and then only have six books?  It’s crazy pants.  I’m guessing relations soured between Nix and Lucas Books, which caused the series to come to an abrupt ended, but what do I know?  Just that this was a huge waste of potential.

Part of the issue is that there is never a clear reason for why this veil has to stay in place and keep the sun out.  We know that there was a war between humans and shadow spirits, but that’s about it.  This world used to have a sun in it, wouldn’t it be better for everyone if we went back to what was natural?  And that thought process gets quickly nipped in the bud with “well, then, all the ice would melt and then what would the Icecarls do? It’s in the name!”  But then this ecology problem gets somewhat resolved when Milla and Tal make it into the violet tower and see the genetic engineering rooms that kind of show that the people of the Castle altered the animals populations of the world to work without a sun.  So…the past Icecarls didn’t even depend on the ice, so why can’t we go back to sunlight?

Plus, it seems like the Castle inhabitants and Crones made everything they didn’t like go back to Aenir and then bound them to only certain parts of that world, so they couldn’t even have a walk about or take a vacation.  It sounds to me like a disservice was done to the shadow spirits.  But again, what do I know since there’s no backstory on this previous war with the shadows.

Crow also dies in the grand finale with the main villain.  Which…okay.  He only became a main character a few books ago and had all the character depth of a sheet of paper, so I really couldn’t work up any feelings on his death.

Moral of this story: don’t do something just because George Lucas asks you to.