An inconclusive conclusion

In the acknowledgements section that follows River of Stars' main text, Kay writes that legend-building is one of the novel's themes (636). He could not have chosen a more engaging way to write about this theme. He points directly at it in the book's final pages.

As everything is wrapping up, more and more vagueness is brought into the narrative. The narrator stops reporting events and begins to speak hypothetically about Shan and Ren. This move from the certainty of what happened to the possibilities held within a few moments alone is the moment around which the legend the story has built radiates.

I use "radiates" here because as much as the book's narrator can be trusted, its voice throughout the book is still that of a tale teller rather than a straight reporter. There's a mercurial element to the narration throughout the book that gives the impression that the telling of Shan and Ren's stories is something that's being spun rather than simply recorded. Such is the sense you're left with in a book from the Song of Ice and Fire series. Both voices are authoritative, but Kay's narrator is more enchanting than Martin's.

Fresh from finishing it, one of my major criticisms of the book is more of a question: Would this story have worked as a five part series instead of a book broken into five parts?

Looking back, I'm not sure it would have. Five separate books would have demanded more material than six chapter parts, and more material would mean leaving the reader with less to fill in for him or herself. It's that act of filling in the blanks, guessing at answers that we're not given, that Kay invites his readers into. Actually, he practically entices them into it.

Another criticism is not so easily dealt with, however.

Even after having finished the book, I'm not convinced that Shan developed as much as Ren. Maybe it's because girls mature faster than boys and so by the time we meet Shan for the first time her personality is more or less as it will be for the rest of her time in the story, but as far as character growth goes hers seems minimal. I'm still left with the impression that every time Shan does discover something new about herself it's more a realization of what she already has rather than something discovered outside of herself.

Over all, River of Stars is an excellent work of concise epic fantasy by a great modern fantasy writer (who just so also happens to be Canadian). Read it if you ever have the chance.