It took me less than a week to finish the first book in the series, reading only in my very limited free time while preparing for my qualifying exams and writing my dissertation proposal. This book, the second in the series, has taken over seven times that and I am still not finished with it. That should tell you all you need to know right there, but I'll expand on it a bit.

This book benefits from the general absence of the paper-thin character Sadira (who reads less like an actual literary character and more like an embarassing junior high fan-fic) and the Larry-Stu-esque Agis (who has his moments, but is overall too unbelievably altruistic and naive for this setting). However the book also suffers from a surfeit of Rikus (an excellent secondary character but far too simple in his desires and motivations to be a compelling protagonist) and a dearth of the cunning and amoral Tithian. The principal antagonist of this novel, Maetan of House Lubar, feels whiny and dull -- certainly no substitute for the first novel's brutal King Kalak.

As other reviewers have noted, the first book in the series covered enough material to fill an entire trilogy and was the weaker for its hurried pace; Denning seems to have reversed course with the second book, stretching what could have been two chapters of material into an entire novel. The reader is told that matters are urgent, told that things need to happen quickly, but there is no feeling of that urgency in the text itself. Even the battles feel sluggish. The issue of the traitor was tiresome and I spent no time trying to suss out his-or-her actual identity. Denning overall spent entirely too much time telling and entirely too time little showing.

There are interesting elements: the dwarven community's absolute stubbornness is fun, as is the dwarven necropolis; the introduction of the Thri-kreen character was much needed; the wraiths and Rikus's possession were neat. But it's just not enough to raise this book over the "mediocre" level -- I'm only sticking with it because i want to be read up for the next book, which i hope will be an improvement on both previous novels (even if it does apparently focus on Sadira).

On a personal note, i've always found Hamanu and Urik to be the most fascinating aspect of the Dark Sun setting -- Denning manages to turn them into boring, stock plot devices.