I wasn't too impressed by the first book in this series (Innocent Mage) but it ended with a serious cliffhanger and when I saw the sequel in the library, I was admittedly curious how it all turned out.

I think Miller is definitely more of a character-focused author than plot-focused. Much of the book dealt with feelings and conversations of the characters... but I found that the pacing was slow and a lot of the book dragged. I really don't think it needed to be ~700 pages. A lot of plot developments were very predictable (for instance there were about 100-200 pages where I was just waiting for some secrets to be discovered, since it was pretty obvious that it would happen eventually.) The ending also felt rushed and too neat, especially in the epilogue. The villain was also a little too cookie-cutter eeevil ("Mwahahaha I will take over the world and kill everyone!!!") for my taste, and some of the issues (racism/cultural/etc) were never developed to the depth that they could have been. I'm still not quite sure how Barl was elevated to a godlike status either.

All that said, though, I found it to be more interesting than the first book and I did read it in two days. It was still a page-turner.