By the time the previous book, Beyond, ended, Kordas had successfully dealt a heavy blow to The Emperor's palace and used the distraction to allow most of the people and livestock from his Barony (which was a Duchy until recently) to slip through a magical gateway to a land far into the west, hopefully out of the reach of the Empire and its soldiers.
During Kordas' recent months as a "guest" at the palace, he found himself constantly assaulted by fresh atrocities. Not only had the palace staff been replaced by enslaved Air Elementals who were stuffed into humanoid constructs called Dolls, but he also learned that deep under the palace, the imperial mages had captured a young Earth Elemental and had been torturing it as a means to force it to release power into the area. With the help of the Dolls, Kordas was able to free the young Earth Elemental, and with the creature loose, its mother was able to find the child and get vengeance for the pain caused to its offspring.
Now, a few months after the Valdemar population had slipped through a magical gate and made a settlement on a crescent-shaped lake, it is clear that this area cannot sustain the people for long. For one, there are already inhabitants near Crescent Lake and Kordas's people can easily overload the land they are settled on.
While the Valdemarans would love to settle down, it is clear that they have not yet found the place they can call home. Kordas must once again encourage his people to pack up and start trekking across this unknown countryside. As his people prepare for the next leg of their journey, Kordas creates a scouting party. These individuals will use magical gateways to jump ahead of the main group. While they are, of course, hoping to find the perfect spot for their budding kingdom, they are also going to have to keep an eye out for any dangers that could befall their families and friends. Oddly enough, Kordas assigns Delia, his wife's little sister, to the scouting party. While Kordas is aware that the young woman has a crush on him, and keeping her busy (and away from him) is a motivating factor, he hopes that she will find herself useful with the scouts and give her some direction in her life.
At first, Delia doesn't see how she could help the seasoned woodsmen that she has been assigned to, but when she demonstrates her Fetching Gift, the scouts quickly find uses for her ability. As the group explores her gift, she learns that she can easily help hunt and fish, and it isn't long before she starts to learn new facets of powers as well. For most of her sheltered life, her Fetching Gift was a novelty at best, but the more she uses it, the more powerful it becomes.
While Delia and the scouts have some strange encounters ahead of the rest of the group, Kordas and his wife, Isla, find themselves dealing with all of the issues that come with a lot of people moving together. Of course, there are squabbles between individuals and groups, as well as some people wanting to stay behind each time they settle down for more than a day or so, but whenever the Valdemarans happen into lands inhabited by other people, Kordas must use his political wits to negotiate their stay on the other people's lands, even if it is just a brief layover. After all, given the number of people and livestock they have in tow, even a couple of days can destroy a grassy field that locals might depend on for their own livelihood.
Every now and then, the migrating people encounter strange creatures of obvious magical origin, and each time they find themselves wondering just what kind of land they've come to. As they trek further and further west, they realize they are getting closer to the lands where the ancient Mage-Wars happened and the strangeness they see around them is a result of the wild magics that those two wizards unleashed upon the world.
I have to say, Into the West wasn't my favorite Valdemar book. The story was more or less Kordas' citizens traveling across the land. Sure there were bouts of excitement, especially at the end of the book when a conflict occurs causing many of Kordas' past decisions to come to a head, but for the most part, there didn't seem to be anything major that couldn't have been a chapter or two in either the previous or next book. In fact, for a good part of the book, I kept trying to figure out what the primary conflict was. Usually you can see the threat and you have an idea of where a story is going, but for most of Into the West, the only thing I was pretty sure of was that before the book was done, Kordas was going to settle in the future site of Haven.
Ultimately, Into the West felt very much like the second book in a trilogy, which it is. The events that happen were necessary in order to get Kordas and crew from where they were at the end of Beyond to where they need to be at the start of The Founding of Valdemar - Book 3, but unless many of the details that happened along the way become vitally important in this next part of the story, it felt like this was mostly filler.
That being said, I am excited to see how this trilogy wraps up. Short stories and references in other books have touched on the events around the founding of the Valdemar Kingdom, and now that Kordas and his people have found their new home, it will be satisfying to see those stories solidified.
