A decade of real life waiting and in the last 30 pages the author pissed the whole lot up the wall its just a generic "LOL bad guys win and all the good guys die LOLOL"
Im being very black and white about this but and stripping all the philosophy out to get to the root of the story, the whole exercise was pointless.
Nothing was resolved. Its just an unsatisfying, cliche resumption of the status quo.
7 book and 10 years can be boiled down to two words - dont matter
A beautifully complex world collapsing into a pile of "K Nope"
What am i missing here?
Well first of all i'm not sure that there are any "Good Guys".
Man is a horrible, brutal race. Selected by the Inchoroi when roaming in Eanna to essentially be another weaponized race. They were manipulated through the use of the Tusk and the subversion of their religion, to attack and destroy the great Nonman civilization.
The Nonmen, although cultured and accomplished, were also fairly brutal in their own right. They took the early tribes of man on this side of the Great Kayarsus and whelmed them. The Emwanna became a somewhat mentally retarded and servile race through selective breeding.
But back to man. There is not a character in the book that is objectively "good". Even those who view themselves as devout (pure, religious, good) are in fact little more than fanatics who have chosen to concentrate their passions in a particular direction. Proyas has slaughtered Orthodox for their lack of faith in his false prophet. Esmenet has sentenced many to die in her role as Empress of the Three Seas.
Mimara is about the closest i have seen to a good person and she seduced an old man for gain, using her likeness to his only love.
Essentially the books seem to be a harsher reflection of our own reality. No person is any one thing. We are all both good and bad to some degree. We are all selfish. We are all generous. We love and we hate.
I would argue that the books are about "The End Justifies The Means".
This last book felt a little dissatisfying (taken on it's own) but if you combine it with TGO and read both directly after one another it is a fantastic read.
There are at least 2 books to go (i would imagine). Moenghus is king of the Scylvendi and has an intact host ready to fight a retreat across the north. Zeum has been mentioned a lot more in recent books and is now coming into the fray (i hope). Kellhus is possibly still in play but is potentially the biggest bad of all. Crabicus is out in the wild. Imperial forces were gathering in Sumna. And who the hell knows what will come out of the east. I find it strange that Bakker went to all the trouble of leaving one tribe out there. One that rejected the Tusk and thus was not manipulated by the Vile.
And lastly, Acha, Esmenet and Mimara are alive. Possibly Kayutas too.