The Upstream Writer: Reader's Review: "They Must Be Stopped" by Kelly Blanchard

Synopsis from Amazon:

Sometimes your best intentions can lead to a world being obliterated.

Five hundred years in the past, Lorrek seeks final clues as to how to defeat the Thymord Order.

Rilolean Warthon quit the Order after his brother died on a mission. Suspecting the Order knows more than they admit, he conducts a secret investigation against them.
To his surprise, the Order assigns him one last mission: return to his homeworld and rescue a former teammate trapped in a land from which no human has ever returned.
Does Rilolean help the organization behind his brother's death, or does he let his friend die in the world Rilolean had hoped to one day save?

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My Review:

Absolutely delightful! There's just something so incredibly awesome about diving into a series with a scope this huge... and yet Blanchard situates her novels so well that the "present day" of the plot still moves forward somewhat, and meanwhile it can go all the way back to centuries in the past and fill in details for the reader without skipping a beat.

That's right. Books 1 through 3 gave us a story arc that starts with Lorrek's return and what ensues from there... and then Books 4 through 6 fill in the information that is needed to understand what's going on. It's "old" events that we're viewing through "magic realm time travel", but it doesn't feel old, and it answers some questions and gives context to the shocking twists we encountered in those first three books--while delivering twists of its own!

We're surveying the point in Thymord history intending to explain, as Lorrek puts it "where things went wrong"--and even at that stage, the level of technological advancement satisfies a cyberpunk itch in a major way (just wait till you meet ELF!!), while also delivering magical duels galore!

This book just proves, like every other book in the series thus far, that Kelly has somehow cracked a world-building code, and she knows exactly what she's doing--whether we're dealing in millennia, centuries, or merely decades. On the one hand, I'm starting to "miss" the favorite characters from the present age (even *gasp* some of the antagonists!), but on the other hand--Thanks to Lorrek, I've been given a birds-eye view of this amazing backstory that contains so many references to things that caught me by surprise at the beginning of the series... and now I'm absolutely dying to know what Lorrek and Radella are going to be able to do with this information!

The story in itself serves up its fair share of fascinating, eclectic, and marvelous characters: from beings who cannot die, immortals who refuse to stay dead no matter how much the reader wants them to, one character in particular whose natural lifespan is devastatingly short--and so many more that I wouldn't be opposed to meeting again! In all of those, there were heroic protagonist characters I connected deeply with, and it did get to a point when "a few chapters before bed" just wasn't viable, and I ended up finishing the last half or so in one sitting!

They Must Be Stopped is a bold display of a keen grasp of continuity--and that alone is worth a high rating, but to add to that a stellar story, relatable characters, and a rousing conclusion, and this book maintains the series-spanning *****5 STAR***** rating without showing any sign of slacking or flagging, and I'm just going to put out the Upstream Writer Certified COMPLETELY RECOMMENDED, because how could I not?? Every word of it is pure genius, and there isn't enough I could say about it, except that every lover of fantasy, cyberpunk, and every speculative category in between absolutely needs to read this series!

Further Reading: (Also By The Author/Addictive Reads/ Clean Reading/Superb Characters)