Seanan McQuire’s 13th October Daye novel is meant to conclude one of the series’ long-running plotlines. Instead it comes across more like an intermission. A rather arbitrary one. It does in fact eventually resolve what it set out to, yet the path traveled to get there is just so… random. Meanwhile, the Raj-centric story tacked onto the end is just plain bad.
Archangel’s War is also meant to be a conclusion, this one to Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter series (or perhaps just the Cascade-related central plot), and in contrast does the job with full marks. After the way the previous book ended on a cliffhanger I didn’t really know what to expect here and ended up pleasantly surprised by a smooth continuation that manages to wrap up just about every loose end to the point I’d be perfectly content with this as the last book in the series.