Exile's Return is the third book in bestselling fantasy author Raymond E. Feist's Conclave of Shadows trilogy. This book is a rather weird ending to the trilogy because it takes the story series in a completely different direction with a new setting and even a different lead character. The villain from the first two books is the hero of this one!

The first book in this trilogy, Talon of the Silver Hawk, is about a boy named Talwin who is the sole survivor of an attack that wiped out all his people. He spends most of the story getting trained to go after the wicked Duke and his men who were behind the attack. The second book, King of Foxes, deals with Talwin's undercover operation into the inner circles of the Duke's entourage so that he could get close enough to kill him. There's an evil wizard in the mix, too.

The second book ends with the Duke being defeated and magically teleported to the other side of the world, and this book picks up literally at the moment where the last one ended. In this world, the Duke has no power, wealth, friends, or influence. He doesn't even speak the language. Upon arrival, the Duke is attacked and captured by some nomads. He eventually escapes their camp and finds his way to a small farm where a recently widowed woman and her young boy live. The Duke forces help from those two in exchange for some added labor around the house. Once he gets his strength back after a long time in the desert, he begins his journey home.

Early on in the story, the Duke falls in with some guys who are from a region near where he lived, and they are carrying a very powerful object that they wish to unload. This object is a suit of armor that seems to be inhabited by some sort of spirit. The group contacts a temple and tries to get it identified, and one by one they are killed off in brutal ways. With no other options for being rid of this obviously evil creation, the Duke decides to take the thing back home and see if the powerful people who banished him would be able to get rid of the suit. The fate of the world depends on it.

This story is one of redemption, and at first I found it quite odd that the author would take the villain from the last two books and put him at the center of this story. This book works well because it is fun to read about this poor bastard being forced to live the kind of life he'd been forcing on his people for years. It's a big ‘taste of your own medicine' kind of redemptive plot that involves many trials and tribulations as this man finds himself in a world where his only asset is intelligence. You have to appreciate a story about someone who could casually order another man's death with a flick of the wrist, but now has to perform hard manual labor just to eat. I also liked that he got caught up in a situation where the only people who could help were the same ones who had overthrown him.

I ended up liking Exile's Return, but it hardly counts as a part of the trilogy since the story is so different. It does all eventually tie back together, which was expected. I got the impression that whatever grand idea the author began with in the first book managed to fizzle out by the end of the second one, so he came up with this wild story as a means of leading into his next trilogy. This is my first go at reading Feist, but I was told by a friend that some of the characters who show up at the end of this book had previously appeared in other trilogies. I just don't know who's who from the bunch because I haven't read those other books yet.

As a whole, I think the Conclave of Shadows trilogy is worth reading simple because of how unpredictable the plot turned out to be. It sure makes an interesting lead-in for Raymond E. Feist's Darkwar Saga.

Recommended: Yes