The fourth and final book in May's "Saga of the Exiles" series, which I've been fitfully working my way through over the last few months. One of the quotes on the back cover of the first, The Many-Coloured Land, referred to the books' "glamorous, sinister movement", and I don't think I could do much better in describing them. May's style of writing, or, more particularly, her style of story-writing, is, in some ineffable way, different from anyone else's that I've come across - I can't put my finger on it, but there's just something about the fashion in which she constructs her (many, ambiguous) characters and (complicated, twisting) plots which sets her novels apart. There's a weird sort of magic to these books which works on me even though I don't feel as if I've particularly enjoyed them. Perhaps it's a case of May having over-reached herself, but only slightly, and in a fashion which allows her partial failure to still be rather magnificent...
In any case, The Adversary brings the series to a satisfying close - characters are disposed of willy-nilly (as throughout the series) while unexpected figures rise rapidly to prominence, the struggles and shifts in the balances of power within and between both individuals and groups continue at the dizzying pace set by the first three books, plot twists abound and competing ideas and ideologies proliferate, and everything seems to wend its way to a climax which possesses a kind of logic without being predictable.
