Soulmarked by David Estes is book three of five in his Fatemarked epic series. I’m glad in a way to make it past the halfway mark of this series. With two more books to go, things are bound to get more hectic and Soulmarked delivers a nice calm before the storm moment. There’s definitely cracks in the armor but I’m determined to see things through to the end at this point. There’s no turning back now! What I found concerning in book three is how little I cared about characters on one side of the story vs the other. Although there are a lot of characters the author has to juggle with, it seems very apparent how some just seems more fine tuned than others. This obviously is true for many epic stories where there are many characters that needs keeping track of as a reader but I’m starting to feel a bit fatigued by some of them here.

It really does seem hard to write a review where I’m reading the books in a series one after another. Things basically happen and the story moves a long. Soulmarked and the next two books in the series is a lot longer than the first two. I very wanted to see how the author would handle this task of what I’d assume is “extra work”. Being the title is Soulmarked, one would have expected the author to put a little more emphasis on the new fatemarked character. That is not to be however. In a way I’m a little glad because I put Lisbeth in the character pile in which I don’t really care for at the moment. What I found is that I cared less about the first half of the book which involved characters of Tarin, Annise, Lisbeth and Rhea. I felt their magic has started to fizzle out. The author needed to stop reminding us of things that happened in the past every time a character is in the spotlight. For example, we don’t need to be reminded of how Rhea is a “changed” woman each and every single time.

I’ve realized that up until now, I don’t believe I’ve encountered any real plot twister that excited me. Maybe the author isn’t one to rely on these. Maybe he doesn’t feel the need to randomly kill off a character just because he feels like it. There could be a lot of maybe’s but I desperately wanted some moments where the author took the plot or characters and do something that would be unexpected. Something that would catch me off guard and by surprise. I did find some satisfaction though that the story of Grey Arris and his sister Shae finally has time to shine and it was a fairly good one. It’s funny how I didn’t care for them in the first two books but now find myself wanting to read more about them and now not so much caring for the others that I did care about in the beginning. If I didn’t find myself interested in the north and west as much, I was at least more captivated with the story regarding the south and east. The story with Jai, Falcon, Raven and Roan is more interesting at this point than with the other two kingdoms.

What I should be saying is that I’m just ready for all the characters to just meet up and do what they were meant to do. I definitely hope the author wouldn’t hold out until book five. For now, the story chugs along. The characters learn a good deal about themselves along with their worth and those around them. Each will have doubts about what their destiny is meant to be. Each will believe that their actions is just. Each will have their own opinion on whether peace can truly be forged throughout the Four Kingdoms.