A slap in the face after the grand and epic nature of the previous book. I found this book frankly, boring. When Goodkind broke from his main characters in Soul of the fire, I found it a refreshing change and necessary to the story. But these new characters are not nearly as interesting. For one, I understand how it is Richard can have a bunch of siblings he doesn't know about, but that doesn't make this an interesting plot point. I couldn't find myself caring very much, and the addition of the gimmicky "adorable animal companion" only deepened my distaste. Aside from that, the author's attempts to keep the tension high gets more and more wearing, and less convincing. Additionally, here begins the author's slow descent, wherein he devolves from a well crafted tale based on interesting philosophical ideals worth starting a conversation over, to blatant preaching. The characters reactions to Richard's ideas are less and less believable, and his espousing of them is more annoying, as he keeps repeating the same ideas over and over, while others are simply dazzled by his wisdom. This is another book in this series I would recommend skipping, as the parts of it that are integral to the understanding of later books are very few, and are covered amply by flashbacks.