David Hogue

Wish I could go 3.5 stars. While this book is full of wonderful characters and amazing ideas, I think that it is also very clunky and poorly executed in parts. I honestly feel the writer himself bit off more than he could chew with this one, as there just seems to be far too many characters and plot points for him to keep adequate track of. This book could have easily been two or possibly even three different novels/short stories. In my opinion, while it does a great job setting up what is to come (I'm excited to see what lays in store for Bell Zettifar in particular), this book itself is likely to be forgotten in the coming months as people will instead settle for basic recaps before reading the next novels which will thankfully be handled by different writers. In other words, read it once then move on..