The Cutter War has finally begun, but seems really rushed--with no great build-up. There's tension & suspence, but no surprises. What saves the book is Chap.16--I had to read it twice, it was so good: the supernatural elements take the foreground. Meanwhile, the Cutter War has not ended. ( )

All filler, no killer. Literally. Could have been three chapters. I only read this because I'm stubborn and I just want this to end. ( )

I wait all year for the next story in the series and, as always, I'm never disappointed. Of course, it always leaves me wanting the next one tough. I read this book in a day (just over 24 hours to be exact) and I found it delightful.

This is a spacer book. It gets us through the big battle and Rudi and Matti crowned but this isn't the end of the series. What I think happened is that the previous book Tears of the Sun ran long, was playing catch-up and then ran too long so it was made into two books. Just not an even break between the two. I'm going to guess that there is at least two more books, or one really long one. ( )

This is one of 2 long series I've been reading sporadically for years now, and with each I wonder why I continue as I read the next book. (The other one is Weber's "Safehaven" series.)

It's not that they're bad books, although both have depths of minutia that frustrate me- in this series it's the detailed military manuvers described thoroughly but without a map of the battlefield. I find such hard to follow, even with good maps; without such, I am utterly lost and any cleverness of strategy and implementation is lost on me. This makes it a boring slog to read.

And this book was mostly that.

There's also somethinglacking in the characters in both series, and it seems to be the same thing in each. Personalities, maybe? apart from Known Quirks, which do not often lead to someone who reads like a real person. For example, ALL the Good Guys seem to agree on pretty much everything, and cheerfully participate in whatever the plot requires, with NO internal scheming, backbiting, ambitions, etc. I really cannot envision a bunch of powerful men and women, many of whom got their positions by scheming and dirty tricks, all of a sudden becoming all noble once they join the Good Guys; leopards tend to stay spotted!

Also, Mathilda just does not work for me. The only daughter of 2 reigning psychopaths, raised mostly in a violent court full of intrigue... and she grows up a Nice Catholic Girl, and that's about the only character she has (even though she is also a fearsome warrior).

This particular volume in the series did not exactly entice me to read more, either, seeing that- apart from the Big Battle that took up most of the pages- nothing much happened- and even the Big Battle did not resolve anything except to delay such resolution.

I'm not quite at the point of taking this series off my Paperback Swap wish list, but I'm getting close. ( )