As I suspected in my last review for Messenger, Lowry’s last three novels in this series are written with a larger interlinked storyline that carries over through to this novel giving them a feeling of being part of something bigger but also having plot threads dangle until the next novel is released.

Son follows Claire, the girl who gave birth to Gabe in the original novel, and her journey to find her son. I think the idea is very cool and her journey is a very perilous one, albeit very slow in the first half or more finally ramping up super fast in the last quarter of the story. This has been Lowry’s signature style throughout this series so I expected it to come, but I found it slightly annoying that we couldn’t let things breath a little bit more with characters and relationships that meant more to the plot.

The overall story finally ties up the threads of the Trade Master and what the evil was in the prior novels. Again, things happen really fast and we’re given an ending but there’s more out there that could have made it a truly happy ending. Maybe that will come in the 5th novel when Gabe builds a boat and he and his mother go off to find Einar, a man who deserves more than he got.

3.0 out of 5.0 stars3.0