When an author kills off the majority of his lead characters after having written six books tracing their adventures you tend to accept that just maybe you won't be reading any more stories about them. Oh sure, the author could write some sort of prequel which could tell of their early days together or how they first met, but no matter how well written those things are they can be strangely dissatisfying. It's like having grown up with a group of friends and shared many life experiences with them along the way to all of a sudden have them revert back to the way they were when you first met them. In your minds' eye you can still see them as they are today, but what you "hear" and witness is them years ago, and they are virtually strangers.

Of course there are other ways an author can bring characters back from the dead if he or she so chooses, especially when they inhabit the type of worlds that exist in fantasy literature. There's usually no shortage of magic or magic users capable of performing a resurrection or two. In fact so many characters do seem to pop back after having kicked the bucket that it has become something of a cliche. Even worse is that the majority of those stories are a disservice to the original books that featured the characters in question as they end up feeling like attempts to exploit the characters' popularity.

When James Barclay wrote Demonstorm he seemed to have brought the adventures of the mercenary group known as The Raven to an end. After two trilogies, The Chronicles Of The Raven and The Legend Of The Raven, only two of the group of soldiers and warrior magicians remained alive after saving their world from the grips of a demon invasion. So when I learned that a seventh book, Ravensoul, distributed in Canada by McArthur & Company, was forthcoming, I was surprised. Yet, after having watched as the books featuring The Raven had grown increasingly complex, and seen how Barclay's ability to make the implausible possible had resulted in another magnificent Epic Fantasy series, The Ascendants Of Estorea (Cry Of The Newborn and Shout For The Dead), there was reason to hope that he could make bringing his people back from the dead work.

It's been ten years since The Raven had successfully beaten off the invasion of their world by the denizens of the demon dimension, and under the leadership of Sol, The Unknown Warrior, who had once led the mercenary troupe into battle, the country of Balaia is finally starting to recover. While some things, like the destruction of the various colleges of magic and their attendant cities, and in particular one college's heart (the conduit of magical power for all who studied a specific college's methodology), will take longer to recover from than others, it's finally starting to look like there will be a future that is based on more than just eking out an existence.