I finished Terminus yesterday: good finish, and probably the second-strongest book in the series/universe after the first one, 14. Really the last book is the most direct sequel to the first, and in some ways it did feel like a reshuffle of a lot of the same elements: you have the big bad, some talismans, and one in-the-know supporting character carrying over, and from there it's a lot of the same things happening to different people in a different setting, though this one is more action movie and less mystery. Not to say it was a total rehash by any means: the different characters and setting make a difference, and it does go just a little deeper into world building. On the whole my response to the whole Threshold series is, was I glad to have more of it? Absolutely. Did the other books particularly add to or stand alone as well as the first one? Questionable. Any of them could definitely be read as a stand-alone.
I needed a palate cleanser after all the grotesquery and violence and started in on Dawn of Wonder by Jonathan Renshaw. So far it seems like a very standard fantasy coming-of-age story, starting with gobs of bucolic prose read in a soothing British murmur by Tim Gerard Reynolds. So, exactly what I was looking for
Some people complain about excessive description, but so far Renshaw's imagery is outstanding. I can't say I've pictured people or places so clearly from an audiobook in quite some time. Here and there he hits it out of the park with tactile imagery, too, really giving you the embodied feel of running through tall, wet grass with your pants sticking to your legs, for instance. I'm rarely one to complain about or skip over excessive description, so I may be in for a treat. Whether the series will continue is questionable at best four years later, a bit like Kingkiller Chronicles, so you get what you get.