Finished this a couple of days ago... This one came close to getting a 4 star rating from me. It's definitely not quite as good (my opinion throughout of course) as The Deed of Paksenarrion and possibly slipped a little from the book that preceded it, Oath of Fealty. Still it falls in the 4.5 range so, I wanted to rate it above 4 stars... in the end, 5 stars, by the skin of it's teeth.

The story moves along and continues the interest level I found in the book it follows. There is a bit of a drag in the story at a couple of points. We get some more details from the king's (duke's) past and how it all ties in. The details we picked up along the way in the Paks world saga continue to fit neatly into place and the story has a good balance of action, plot and characterization.

For those wished for it, we finally pickup a bit of romance here and I admit that it wasn't something I was enthralled by, still it's been coming and is an integral part of the story. Here we are also filling in more of the story we started back in the Paksenarrion trilogy and finding out more about "the Lady".

So, while I may not think this volume as good as the preceding trilogy or lead in volume, I still like it greatly and rate it 5 stars. All these books (The Deed of Paksenarrion, Oath of Fealty and this one, Kings of the North) are highly recommended.