** spoiler alert ** This is one of the better in the series. The pace of this book is good and my horrible experience with book number four is almost forgiven by having two great books in a row. Richard and Kahlen start out together and even though it is because they are helpless while Jagang is taking over the world and Kahlen has to recover from her terrible experience, you are glad to see them together. I can't help but worry that they are not in a place where ruling the Daharan Empire and making good on their promise to join the Midlands would be easier, but they are getting and giving messages to direct the army.

Then Nicci kidnaps him and changes everything. She is oddly likable but so wrong in her ardent beliefs long carried from a fanatical upbringing. Terry has many disturbing characters and you might like them at first, but this one is unique in how you start to like her more as more is revealed about her. There is a lot of background, in flashbacks. She is seeking a truth she isn't sure what it is. Having myself broken free of the strong hold christian indoctrination had held over me for a lifetime, I can identify with her not really being able to pinpoint what it is she is missing, but that it was everything.

She takes him to her world, where Jagang has imposed her and Jagang's disturbing distortion of generosity on everyone, by force. Terry is very good at making each culture in the different lands distinct, and the audiobook reader uses different accents to represent the different regions. That alone is a joy to be carried through. Each book holds new and diverse characters to interact with, but themes carry over such as deep respect for horses and details about how characters treat horses tells us something about them.

I very much liked how Richard's captivation went. How even under these impossible odds, his spirit naturally thrives and burns off these impurities to get at a truth and it burns a hole through their whole society. He was there for a full year! Who is running the Empire?! The end is a little too neat, but very suspenseful and exciting.

We follow Kahlen into more battle strategy, and cannot help but be impressed with her over and over. There are some great tense moments there, such as when you are trapped in a tent, right along Kahlen and others, as it is on fire and being drug by an Imperial Order solder on horseback! Perhaps Terry's weakest character skill is writing for young girls and we get one more example. I feel we lose a character prematurely, but yes someone we loved had to die to make the connection back to Richard and keep the warzone feeling of danger, but what a tough choice Terry had in who to take.

So many story lines to follow...um, oh, we get to see an expansion of who Jagang is as a character, what his vision is for this take over and we learn of the true force behind him.

How can such awesome writing be bestowed on the same man who took me through hell in book four? I don't know what to say. I have already begun book #7.