Shield of Sea and Space

Shield of Sea and Space by Erin Hoffman, Chaos Knight #3

Vidarian Rulorat, called the Tesseract, a powerful magic-user whose abilities spread across multiple elements, finds himself at war with the Alorean Import Company, a powerful cabal of merchants wealthy enough to buy nations. By opening the gate between worlds, Vidarian released the Starhunter, goddess of chaos. With her coming, wild magic returned to the world of Andovar, bringing with it shape-changers and strange awakened elemental technologies, including many-sailed ships powered by air magic, and mechanical automata lit from within by earth and fire.

Now, Vidarian discovers that the Alorean Import Company is determined to eliminate two-thirds of this new life on Andovar in the hopes of hoarding more magic for themselves in a new, worldwide plutocracy. Along with his human, gryphon, and shapechanger allies, he must stop the Company if he is to safeguard any future for the diverse life of Andovar, including his and Ariadel’s newborn daughter.

With the existence of whole species hanging in the balance, Vidarian is locked in a race for the future of the world.

Shield of Sea and Space is the third and final book in The Chaos Knight trilogy written by Erin Hoffman, the earlier books in this series were Sword of Fire and Sea and Lance of Earth and Sky. I have been enjoying this series from the fist book onwards. This series really took a turn for the better with the second book in the series where Erin Hoffman transformed the storyline to a much greater cause than I could have imagined. I was really looking forward to read the conclusion of The Chaos Knight series.

I just briefly want to break down the series. In the first book, Sword of Fire and Sea, we were introduced to the main protagonist of the series Vidarian and how he opened a gate that led to an influx of magic, though what was in store for our hero wasn’t quite sure. The second book, Lance of Earth and Sky dealt mainly with the consequences that were brought on by the opened gate. Of course these 2 sentences do not come near to justify what these books feature, there is a lot more going on, think pirate attacks, gryphons, shape changers and last and definitely not least the automata.

Lance of Earth and Sky left me hungry to find out how this series would end. Like I already mentioned above and in my review of Lance of Earth and Sky is that the storyline was really transformed from book one to book 2 and that Erin Hoffman really steered into a new direction in Lance of Earth and Sky revealing a lot more of the world of Andovar, the different characters and mostly the consequences. It was therefore a sequel to my liking. And again in the final book in the series Erin Hoffman again takes this series further.

Shield of Sea and Space takes place a bit of a year later than Lance of Earth and Sky (or at least I reckon) since Vidarian has a 4 month year old daughter. The goal for Vidarian was pretty straightforward from early on in the book but instead of letting Vidarian travel from point A to B and completing his task, Erin Hoffman throws him in a fight for survival, his own and that of many other species. This was reminiscent to the second book where we already learned my more of the world and this is further shown in quite the depth in the third book. However, it not purely showing what is possible, but in her writing, she gave the feeling of a certain importance to the task of Vidarian and what would happen should he not succeed.

Not only does she delves deeper into the world itself again but also does she show more of the character that you follow from the series overall. Vidarian as the main protagonist keeps on growing book after book showing a clear determined character but also Ariadel, who you actually did not see that much in the second book but made an appearance in flying colors for the finale. I don’t know if I can conclude the shape changer companions of Vidarian and Ariadel: Rai and Raven and the different gryphons characters per se but I must admit that by way of how Erin Hoffman writes about them they are quite marvellous, well developed and even show there own development as the story progressed. I was very pleased with how she involved these intelligent beings into her story. Producing a great epic scene with her own twist.

One thing does fall a bit into notice and I think that owes a bit to the introduction of one specific power for Vidarian, the gates. In the first book there was a lot of travel done that made the story leap from page to page without a certain transition. With the gate’s, the story for me did have the tendency to move forward too fast. Producing in certain parts of the story a more hectic and sometimes a bit hard to follow.

It is tricky to tell more about the storyline itself, with Shield of Sea and Space all falls into of what was set into motion. You should really experience this series for yourself. For me some of the plusses were the explosive and versatile elemental magic that was constantly woven into the story and which makes up an somewhat integral part of the story, and an second addition that makes this series actual bridging between epic fantasy and science fiction, the automata and how she even though they were introduced in the second book, make up a large part of the story itself. I really liked to visualize when Khalesh used his automata devices, it just brings up those vivid images.

With Shield of Sea and Space, Erin Hoffman writes up a fine conclusion that produces a satisfied feeling for me. As an author, you can see that she also has learned a lot about how to write several things and especially what to include. Shield of Sea and Space is again an adventure that is scaled to epic proportions featuring enough magical battles that ask you to use your own imagination, interesting characters, both automated and human and not to forget the shape changers and the gryphons and the many other special creatures. The Chaos Knight trilogy is a engaging series that you have to experience yourself!