Stalking Darkness question

Stalking DarknessLynn Flewelling

I really like some of the themes in this book. She has really a lot of courage writing it. The romance between seregil and alec was very interesting. But here are some issues:

The book acts like breaking into well-guarded nobles houses is a walk in the park. OK, Seregil is supposed to be the best, but why is that? He has a magical charm he can use on hounds, and he can pick locks. It just seems like neither of them are ever challenged when they do this, and apparently they do it on a routine basis. It should be a huge undertaking with massive risk to do it even once, let alone on a regular basis.

One could make the arguement that Seregil was just an exemplary thief, a genius of his trade, if it weren't for Alec coming in with almost no training and doing it on his own within a few months. Heck, every thief in the city should be rolling in cash if it's that easy. All they need is some meat for the dogs and some lockpicking skill.

Second, we don't really get to know many of the nobles, understand what their holdings are, factional interplay between them, relative power, differences, competency... I don't expect it to be on the same level as 'A Song Of Ice and Fire' but there's just nothing here. What nobles does Seregil dislike, and why? Who is he allied with? The nobility as a class is given little to no personality; it is paper thin. This wouldn't be so important if she didn't write Seregil as a noble.

The only time when we get to know any of the nobles is when they happen to relate to the plot, and that makes the whole thing come across as contrived. A great storyteller would first worldbuild enough so that we knew what bailick each noble fell into. Like, do they own manufacturies in western skala, do they own vast farmland, are they influential at court because they are related to the close advisor to the queen? That needs to be done FIRST.

if you wait to do that until they are important to the story, then it turns into "OH, we got a mission to infiltrate this nobles house, and hes important because he advises the queen..." But we have never heard of him before in the story. It is unrealistic.

Aside from this, the plot is just so convenient in other ways as well. Seregil needs to go to the mountains and get a powerful magical artifact thats been hidden away for thousands of years? Why, done in a couple days! They meet an army on the way, well let's just destroy them of course! Admittedly the events that led to their destruction were not far-fetched, but still this series has a major problem with a feeling that the main characters can just go anywhere, do anything, and they won't be challenged at all. And if that made sense from plotting, where the characters are actually supposed to be a lot stronger than anybody else, like in 'Off Armageddon Reef' forinstance, it would be a lesser detriment, But Seregil and Alec are supposed to be spies. The amount of power they seem to have makes James Bond look incompetent.

I like that it has romance between male characters(hoping it gets to the level of 'The Guild of The Cowry Catchers', if she has enough courage to take it that far, then I might give it 4 stars just because that is so rare in writing), but really objectively speaking the story is overrated compared to other stories. 4.24 is extremely high star rating and the problems I have mentioned here are not trivial.

guess ill turn this into a review since nobody seems interested in discussing.