Nevare, the main character in this book, is one of the most passive characters I've ever encountered in literature.

Stuff happens to him. Not only does he have no control over the stuff, he has no _possibility_ of gaining control over the stuff. Its like reading a book about the victim of a tidal wave, that starts with the water rising but ends as soon as it recedes and before our hero can react at all. Needless to say, the stuff that happens is all bad, but the way he just mopes around whining about how depressed he is by it all means hes not even a sympathetic victim character. And at the end of the book, when he finally actually does something besides wield a shovel and whine, he only does what he is forced to do by "the magic", so he _still_ manages to be a passive character. We don't like him, we don't care about him, and we don't care about the stuff beyond his control that keeps inexplicably happening to him.