Amazing. Truly amazing how her world and the story continues to evolve and keep the reader on the tips of their toes in political suspense. Even after ten novels, the story remains captivating.

If I have one complaint, it's that I've always felt that Toby and Barbara were a little too flat as characters, and I'm still unsure how I feel about them becoming a main thread in the plot of this arc. On the other hand, perhaps a large part of that is because the author writes so well from Bren's perspective that Bren's continual belittling and compartmentalizing and underestimating of the two as they fail to live up to his expectations is so frustrating that it may just be brilliant writing at its subtlest. Perhaps this arc is needed so that Bren finally gets over his hang-ups with the two....