The Wayfarer Redemption/YMMV

• Boring Invincible Villain: Gorgrael. He hardly does anything at all and we never, ever see him until the very last chapters, where he promptly gets his ass handed to him by Axis.
  • Boring Invincible Hero: Azhure, and to a degree Axis as well.
• Jerkass Woobie: Borneheld, believe it or not. The sole reason he is such a loathsome asshole is because the world was repeatedly telling him "screw you Borneheld." He was a Butt Monkey on multiple occasions, almost enough to qualify him for the Chew Toy trope, and rarely did anything ever go good for him without the help of the Seneschal's team of professional Smug Snakes. He winds up slowly falling out of favor, driven a bit crazy enough to murder his dad, and then he instantly regrets it. He is stuck in a marriage with a woman who would rather be banging, guess who, Axis. His own mother hits him when she sees him again and basically disowns him in favor of...guess who, Axis. He then loses all his battles against Axis, winds up dueling him, loses to Deus Ex Machina, and gets his heart ripped out. The author is telling us something very strongly about this character.** Timozel. He starts as a kind-hearted boy who just wants recognition. He pledges himself to Faraday out of the goodness of his own heart. Then... He's brutally mind raped by Gorgrael and to a lesser extent WolfStar, then decides the easiest way to both protect Faraday and gain the respect he wants is to help Faraday's husband, Borneheld, because Faraday won't tell him about her own plans. Then Faraday rejects him and because of the mind rape, he's forced to become Gorgrael's general. And by the time he's found by Axis, he's been twisted and destroyed and Axis doesn't even hesitate once to kill him. Wow.
  • Dragonstar qualifies at the beginning of The Wayfarer Redemption. Sure, he'd been a jerk in the past, but he's basically stuck as a mortal, watching as the whole rest of his family gets to live forever, and hate him for a reason he doesn't even remember because of the way magic affected him.
• Mary Sue: Azhure could be seen as degenerating into this in the second and third books.
• Moral Event Horizon: Borneheld crossed this by fatally, and remorselessly, backstabbing Freefall (who was distracted advising Axis not to attack Borneheld). This is heavily lampshaded by the various reactions of Faraday, Axis and Magariz. The entire Seneschal crossed this line when it was revealed that their genocide of the Forbidden was founded on a complete lie. If this alone didn't send Jayme and Moryson over the Moral Event Horizon, the revelation that they had tortured and attempted to ruthlessly murder Rivkah certainly did.
• The Woobie: Zenith definitely qualifies.
• Stoic Woobie: Despite everything Axis has put her through, Faraday remains strong to the end.
  • Azhure is a Stoic Woobie too, She watched her mother die and was physically abused by her foster father until she killed him and escaped to the Avar who rejected her because she dared to use violence to survive. It only gets worse for her until Starman, then it's worse after that, but she handles it as well as she can.

---

Back to The Wayfarer Redemption