This is an excellent series, and Primeval Fire is a worthy conclusion. There is little I can say about the plot without spoilers (readers who caught the foreshadowing at the end of the second book are sure to know why), but I will try to talk about the book in general terms.

To get the negatives out of the way upfront, I did feel that the series could have gone an extra book. This final volume certainly wraps things up well enough, but there is a lot going on the world that could have been expanded upon. For some readers, the conclusion will feel rushed; although, I feel that Rwizi is good at implying what gets left off the page. Loose ends may get wrapped up quickly, but we are given some notion of what we've missed.

As for the positives, there is a lot to love. The sci-fi elements continue to develop in Primeval Fire, to the point that much of it reads like science fiction. The fact that all of the technology is running on magic hardly matters. After all, Star Trek's technology might as well be magic for as well as the general audience understands it. The difference, of course, is that Rwizi's technology is explicitly magical, and we also get plenty of fantasy action in a less technological mode.

As in the first two volumes, the complexity of the plot and its various mysteries is balanced by Rwizi's foreshadowing. There are always clues that give one some notion of where everything is headed without giving everything away. Some readers will figure out major plot twists in advance, perhaps--while others will miss all of the hints and be in the dark throughout--but I think that most readers will find that Rwizi is good at telegraphing where things are going without showing his hand.

I'm going with 4 stars because the series isn't perfect, but for me, that really comes down to it having the room for another volume. I very much recommend reading this series.

One Sentence Summary: The conclusion to this incredible African-inspired fantasy has our group of protagonists scrambling to prevent a darkness from breaking free into the world.

My thoughts:

Primeval Fire is the last book in the Scarlet Odyssey trilogy and beautifully wraps up the story. The first half was a little slow and introduced a whole host of new characters, so I was concerned the ending would be rushed, and a rushed ending was the last thing this gorgeous trilogy deserved. Fortunately, I needn’t have feared. The second half read like a dream, working hard to conclude the story and wrap up the characters’ story lines. It was all heartbreakingly beautiful, and just reinforced how much I love the characters.

It’s all about the characters for me. The world is incredibly amazing and perfectly detailed, but the characters steal the show for me every time. After the heart stopping end to the second book, I was terrified of what I would find in the last book, and where on earth it could possibly go. But it was perfect, absolutely perfect. I felt that this third book belonged more to Ilapara than Salo, and I loved that it felt like most of the story was told by her. She’s amazing, teetering on the edges of the world of men and the world of women and just perfectly blending them to be perfectly her. I wished for Tuk’s perspective, but seeing him through Ilapara’s eyes was so much fun. Salo, well, he has this incredible story that broke my heart and put it back together. This book just reinforced how much I love him. He’s incredible, almost too good to be true, but I couldn’t imagine him being any other way, because his good heart has always been his downfall throughout the story. I also loved the new characters. I was apprehensive about them showing up, but, by the end, because this book is not small, I adored them and couldn’t imagine the end of the story without them. The characters really stole the show here. They were all perfectly imagined and executed, and I loved getting to know them better. There is also a really sweet romance that had been hinted at throughout the whole series, but it really came out strong here. It was a little off putting at first, as it felt like it came out of nowhere, but, by the end, it just made me melt.

The world deserves some attention. It perfectly blends magic and technology. Ilapara and Tuk get the opportunity to travel beyond the Redlands (Africa) and enter a strange new land (to Ilapara) that really came off strongly as steampunk. I’m not a big fan of steampunk, but this book just perfectly couched it so it felt like steampunk as well as its own thing. The careful balance of magic and technology and how they all worked together has amazed me throughout the series, and Primeval Fire just proved what a feat it is. I loved this world, loved how everything blended so well. It’s an exceptionally well-executed balancing act.

There’s more I’d love to say about Primeval Fire, but, as the third book in the series, and especially after how the second book ended, saying too much would be too revealing. Suffice to say I loved just about everything. The beginning was a little slow and the back and forth in time was a little disorienting, but it all really does come together by the end. The end is note perfect. Primeval Fire is a beautiful conclusion to the trilogy, neatly wrapping up all the story lines and offering new things, people, and places to explore in an incredibly manageable way.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

Primeval Fire is the third and final book in C.T. Rwizi's Dark Epic Fantasy Trilogy which began with Scarlet Odyssey and continued with Requiem Moon. The series features a setting heavily inspired by - and seemingly taking place in an alternate version of - Africa, where various tribes and peoples exist with different magics (which often seem very code-based and Clarke-ian in how it often seems like technology) and traditions (as well as prejudices) and where peoples from outside this continent keep a tenuous eye on the happenings within. It's also a dark series, with horrifying backstories (including at least one involving rape), and atrocities that happen in the modern day as the series' main characters attempt to do the right thing in a world where there are no right answers....and the only path may be to act according to the whims of some who are evil. It's a series that has had a LOT of balls juggling in the air through two books, with plotters and powers on multiple levels, so I was kind of surprised to find out that this third book would be the conclusion - I expected this to be a longer series.

And well, Primeval Fire is an enjoyable and very readable concluding volume, but it suffers quite a bit from being the third and final volume of this series, resulting in the book not really having time to deal with the ramifications of many of its parts. With the story's two most prominent protagonist characters at least temporarily out of the picture, the story is told from the perspectives of a bunch of new and old secondary characters, as they each try to find a way to survive in a world that has changed massively - often for the worst - and to prevent it from further being devastated by dark powers. These plotlines are all compelling, and the conclusion is very enjoyable, but there's enough potential obviously not realized here that it still feels like a disappointment to some extent.

NOTE: Spoilers for Books 1-2 are unavoidable below. If you intend to read the first two books, avoid the rest of this review.




---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
The world has changed since Salo ran with the Hegemon's crown and met his fate. In the Yerezi Plains, the Queen has come into strange and miraculous new powers, powers she is using ot expand the tribe's influence further into the continent, to make a new empire of her own. In Yonte Saire, the Mystic formerly known as the Arc has used a piece of the crown to seize power and claim the title of Emperor, wielding powerful magics against those who oppose him. And outside the continent, forces form the East and the West, the Enclave and the Empire, are rising with attention towards those on the continent, wielding unfathomable powers and weaponry. And a mysterious new King is arising....one with his own surprisingly strong magical strength and who intends to use the powers of the Emperor and the Queen for his own plans....

In this new world, Salo's friends find themselves adrift and lost, seemingly without hope, until new discoveries give them purpose and direction. Aneniko, mourning the loss of the boy he couldn't admit till too late that he loved, finds himself going AWOL from his duties as royal guard to help a Faraswa boy Salo once saved, a boy who is suffering mysterious seizures due to signals coming from the West. Ilapara and Tuk find themselves on a forbidden journey back to Enclave territory armed with the stored remnant of Salo's soul, which they hope to use to resurrect him. And Alinata sees a vision that forces her to make a choice between the Queen she has done unspeakable things for and doing something to make amends for the world she broke.

And in a devastated land struck by a catastrophic magical corruption, a stranger awakens lacking any memories of who he is and how he got there. And this stranger somehow contains knowledge and magical understanding that may be the only thing between this survival and further devastation by an Adversary just waiting to unleash demons upon the entire world...
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Requiem Moon ended on some crazy cliffhangers - Salo dead (albeit in a way that you know he'll be back, as Isa has obviously set things in motion to allow his resurrection), Isa having used the Arc's plans to break the curse splitting the tribes apart (at what turns out to have costed her life, something that wasn't really clear from the end of Requiem Moon), and Yerezi Queen and the Arc having conspired together to carve up the continent....and godlike forces having attempted to use Salo to renew their ages old conflict in their favor and against their enemies, with both of them having a point. And of course this doesn't even go into the Enchantress still running rogue or the Enclave and Empire being out there, more likely to re-emerge as active players now that forces of the Hegemon have seemingly returned.

So it shouldn't surprise that the book features parts with two-three characters narrating points of view from disparate places on the continent, each trying to figure out a path forwards to navigate this new world in a way that leads to a better outcome. And well these characters are rather compelling. In Ilapara you have the woman warrior who now has more to protect, as well as something to avenge....and who has to go to strange new lands in the Enclave to try and bring back Salo who she lost (and alongside her, although not a POV character, is Tuk who is so depressed at Salo's passing that he becomes manic at the prospect of saving him, for better and worse). In Aneniko, you have the boy who realized he let the one he loved (Salo) go without telling him, and who is desperate to make up for that by protecting the one Salo saved. In Alinata you have the regretful apprentice, who knows she will forever be haunted by her choices in support of a Queen who wasn't as good as she thought, but who might just take one chance to make things right. In Kamali you have the mage-soldier who once killed many just to save the whole and now finds himself hatefully working for the Emperor just to save lives...to his disgust. And then you have the Stranger, who mysteriously possesses powers and understanding that are surprisingly familiar...but is in a context no one could have imagined.

These voices are all compelling, as is the general setting of this Africa-esque land in which the local forces are now incredibly powerful and armed with magic, while the resistance forces find themselves only able to fight back with weapons from outside the continent, as those outside continent forces find themselves using their technology/magic to try to stop what they see as the return of an unspeakable force. And Rwizi uses this setting and character to lead up to a strong conclusion in which it all comes together in a way that creates a satisfying ending in its status quo.

Unfortunately, the path to getting to that ending is often a disappointment, and not just in a few plot twists that are so obvious you'll see them coming a mile away (gee, you'll guess who the Stranger is from the beginning, and will guess that one other character isn't what others assume all the same). The book is so laser focused upon reaching that ending that it never stops to consider ramifications of its new status quo when those parts of the setting are revealed - so for example, how the Yonte tribes were forcibly merged together by the Emperor? Not really dealt with, it just happened, so get used to it. The creation of a third power in the "King of the West"? Yeah that party's identity and his supporters are a major reveal, except by the time that reveal occurs, it has no impact on the actions of the rest of the characters...and there's no actual conflict then with that clearly dark character so as to make that matter. Nor is there any showdown with the Yerezi Queen, a major antagonist after the last book's cliffhanger, who basically does nothing in the finale (nor does the Emperor/Arc). And well, whereas the last book made clear in its big reveal of the cosmic forces that the Cosmic Good Force (the Vigilance) and its Devil (Arante) were not necessarily really good and evil, with Arante having plenty of real grievances and reasons for what she did, in this book they're back to being good vs evil, as if that conflict and questions never happened.

Again Primeval Fire is fine, and how it gets to its ending, and how its magic and technology intertwine with its compelling characters is often really thrilling, so I don't want to be too negative on this book. But the series spent its first two books building a really complex world with lots of questions, themes, and plotlines, and here it just sort of seems to not bother with a bunch of them so that it could come to a conclusion. A loss of potential, even if this is still enjoyable.

(5/5) I will start out by saying that I loved the first two books in this series and because of some, um, ~events~ that happened at the end of the second book (no spoilers!) I really wasn't sure what to expect with this book. But C.T. Rwizi, C.T. Rwizi did not fail me! I love African-inspired sci-fi/fantasy books and this series was what really introduced me to the subgenre a few years ago, since Scarlet Odyssey was a Prime First Reads book.

It is hard -- really hard -- to write a book from the perspective of multiple characters and for it not to feel boring or like you're just dragging through one chapter to get back to another character, but Rwizi masterfully draws you into each character's story in such a way that none of the chapters feel boring. Loved the character growth and the way Rwizi tied everything together in the end, though this book did feel more mature than previous books (which, I suppose comes with the character and relationship development).

And the worldbuilding! THE WORLDBUILDING!!! I love that Rwizi is expanding the universe from the first two books, where we mostly stayed in the Redlands. Rwizi has previously said in an interview that he would love to see the series made into a video game, and I can definitely see that influence in his writing, with a myriad of characters, moralities, and ethical choices that characters make throughout the series that completely change its course.

I would recommend reading these close together, because reading this one made me wish I'd reread the first two to get caught up/refreshed on the magic system. While this series was previously supposed to be a duology, we are all lucky that Rwizi decided to expand the story into a trilogy. Really great close to a series that I love.

I loved the first two books of The Scarlet Odyssey trilogy, and my high hopes for the third book have been more than assured. Primeval Fire is an outstanding conclusion to the trilogy. Rwizi masterfully handles all the plot lines, the characters all grow, and interest in the book never flags. An excellent finish to a magnificent trilogy.

My thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for providing an ARC of the book.

Salo died and the world is at war. When members of his clan start having odd experiences, the mystic tells them that a signal is coming from the west and they must respond. During this same time, Ilapara and Tuk decide that they are going to raise Salo from the dead. They seem to be successful, but the Salo they resurrected is not behaving like the person they remember. Why are these groups pulled towards the west? Will they be able to keep the world they know from collapsing?

Primeval Fire is the third and final book in the Scarlet Odyssey series. Rwizi didn’t spend much time getting readers caught up with past events and I am happy because this book had enough length and I enjoyed just jumping in and following the adventure. With that being said, I recommend that readers start with the first book and work their way through it so that they can enjoy the full story and readers will want to reach the end to enjoy the climax.

This is a strong follow up in the series. It leaves the reader guessing throughout. It is tough to keep straight with a large cast of characters but they are all well developed. It is an enjoyable read that I want more of.

There exists a magical world and a war is happening. Salo, the friend of many,is killed. Powerful magic seems to be coming to certain leaders. Salo's friends try to bring him back from the dead.