The style is just lovely as long as I remember to take a deep breath, relax, and just let the words flow over me. At the same time as reading frantically to find out what happens next. ( )

In Three Musketeers style, and his own distinctive style, this is a book about a very complicated and dangerous time in the past of the Dragaeran empire, pre-Vlad. A lot of history from the Vlad series gets filled in here. At times, it goes a bit long as the characters explore parts of their personalities, but otherwise excellent. ( )

They should use this book as prison punishment: Don't get me wrong. I loved reading Dumas. This is nowhere near as good. Frankly, the inane, stupid, repetative, and annoying dialogue in this book should be used in english classes as an example of how to completely bore a reader to tears. If it was done as a sketch on SNL for 5 minutes it would be annoying, let alone EVERY SINGLE TIME characters in this book speak. The most notorious example of the pointlessness of the writing in this book is the chapter where they discuss in minute and silly detail the provisions for their trip. If that wasn't boring enough, a character that was absent during the discussion walks in and they REPEAT THE LIST OF WHAT THEY ARE TAKING AGAIN. Yep, that is high drama. Add to that the pointless, poorly written, and repetitious duels that occur randomly between annoying dialogue and you have a book that is not fit to be read by intelligent human beings.

If they tried to put this in prison libraries they would be sued for cruel and unusual punishment. Ever read the Eye of Argon? this is *almost* as stupid.

Don't waste your time.

Enjoyable, but the conversation style quickly grew to irritate me. Staring a conversation meant reading half a page of back-and-forth that was slightly funny the first time, but not thereafter... ( )

As with the Viscount of Adrilanka novels, the stories are fine but the narrator character's speech patterns are almost unbearable. This book and the sequel, Five Hundred Years After, are fairly amusing takes on The Three Musketeers. ( )