In fact, all the natural laws and shortcuts were basic enough to fit into a fairly stock volume, the Book of Rules. The few details the book missed were left to the powerful magicians and sorcerers to tidy up, and they've been doing it ever since. In fact, they've been overdoing it ever since, acting just like a massive bureaucracy. Nothing is too minor for their notice; no cliché remains untouched or unmandated. My theory is that this is why it often seems that everybody's sword and sorcery epics are variations of the same book — after all, we know they are better writers than that, right?

Under the Rule that mandates that all great adventures be at least trilogies, the Dancing Gods series was always intended to be at least three. This is, I believe, the fifth. In the fourth, Songs of the Dancing Gods, we resolved a ton of questions and polished off a lot more enemies, but we left one in the wrong state and another in the lurch, I'm here to get him out.

I hesitated to take on the horror boom at its height, even though it probably produced the most hackwork since cyberpunk. Movements always tend to do that. Some folks who are really good do something new and original and creative, and then it's piling on the bandwagon and going to the Sea of Dreams to see what clichés and stock situations drift through. Still, I figured they'd have their day — everybody deserves one now and again — and I pretty much waited until the cycle crested and fell.

This book is an excellent example of kicking people when they are down. I've limited my easily recognizable targets to the dead and the superstars (and been fairly nice to the latter lest their lawyer birds and Del Rey's lawyer birds have sky battles). The knowledgeable can pick out all the little items here and there that twit those who really deserve it. Have fun finding them.

As with Songs, this volume departs from the first three in being a lot more serious for a long segment, possibly the first third of the book, then goes through occasional gags, broad throwaways, gratuitous slaps and kicks, and the like, until at the end we just throw everything down the tubes and go completely bananas.