This is the second book of the Book of Words trilogy. The main focus of the story shifts from Jack, The Bakers Boy, to Tawl, The Knight of Valdis (The Man Betrayed). Jack is still around and we get updates enough to keep us interested so that when the two join back together in book 3 we still care.

As with the first book in the trilogy, I really enjoy these books, but I find the habit of Ms. Jones to introduce an interesting character (Traff in this case) and then have that character disappear for large stretches and then reappear to move the story forward and then disappear again, (view spoiler)[ in this case he dies in the assassination of the duke (hide spoiler)], never to be heard from again, really annoying. I know some like her ability to interweave a lot of characters together, but I don't like how loosely everything is thrown together.

Overall - I liked this book and I like this author. Read this book if you are looking for a fairly generic fantasy story with some interesting characters (the main ones) and an overall interesting story-line.