Lots of characters in search of a war. A plethora of people drag the build up along for hundreds of pages before knocking it all on the head in a flurry of secret gods and new characters wandering in. Hundreds of loose ends, many interesting characters with an Eddings sense of humour, are not tied into the main story at all. This is all fairly readable, but quite chaotic. All of the characters with a sense of humour have the same sense of humour of course :)

In all honesty I find all of the books in this series a bit annoying, because having loved Gardens of the Moon, I have wanted a proper sequel and not seen it yet, instead we have all of these tangential works set in the same general universe, none of which have the same appeal. Hopefully I have just missed it.


Warning, if you find hundreds of characters confusing, this book is really not for you, the author is constantly adding in more and more.

Something about the style makes me think of Penny Vincenzi, you keep on turning the pages, though Penny does emotions much better.

If you do like this book, then another author with an epic scale is Hugh Cook, whose "The Wizards and the Warriors" does grandeur, madness, dragons, magic and swarming insect hordes splendidly.