So remember how I said the best characters in the series are the Drew kids and Merriman?

Guess who's not in this book.

We must suffer through another book of Will "Old One" Stanton as he sleepwalks through his destiny in Wales, magically fulfilling the prophecy by waking the Sleepers by playing the Golden Harp, which is a Thing of Power. Also, he must defeat the Grey King or whatever. I didn't give a flip about Will—who starts out recovering from a sickness and doesn't even remember all his Old One shit, so that's annoying—but the real star of the book is Bran, the albino boy with the dog Cafall (pronounced "Cavash" because WELSH MAKES NO SENSE). Bran is a likable character, and his story—he's a bastard whose mother disappeared—provides for an interesting mystery in the background.

This book is VERY WELSH, and I know that's probably appealing to some people, but it made no difference to me. The audiobook made it even more Welsh than it would have been since the Welsh was pronounced correctly (so I had no idea "Cavash" was actually "Cafall"), making the random Welsh lesson early on kind of pointless and irritating (although I can see how it would probably be good for someone reading the book in print).

I struggled to pay attention to the actual story, which seemed to focus way too much on sheep and dogs and less on, you know, the Grey King and magic and stuff. Cooper's pacing and narrative structure are just not my thing; characters seem to do nothing for pages and pages and then magically end up somewhere important, do something significant, and then be boring for pages and pages. There rarely seems to be any real conflict or active struggle. There was a nice "Oh, fuck!" reveal at the end, but that was the most exciting part of the book.

Despite all this, however, I know that in the final book, Will goddamn Stanton will be outnumbered by characters I do like, so here we go.