Sword-and-sorcery-adventures in a Medieval setting: male characters nice, female characters not important. The fighting makes nice reading, but the over-all story I find disappointing. Some bad sorcerers have some bad plans: what those are, I don't know at the beginning and I don't know at the end of the book... ( )

For those fans of Jimmy the Hand wanting all the hints of adventure he must have had as a Squire in Arutha's court, becoming a spymaster, hunting down assassins, then this is the book for you.

It's weird going back in time to the days after the original Riftwar like this but I'll admit the story potentials are rather rich. If small, focused, and detailed. :)

In some ways, the end of this novel feels like a slightly more awesome ending to Silverthorn. No complaints. At all. Lots of action, character development, skullduggery, infiltration, and all-around fun fantasy thievery. :) ( )

This is the second book in the Riftwar Legacy, part of the much larger Riftwar Cycle. Theoretically I had read this book before, but I remembered absolutely nothing about it. While my memories of most of these books have been very faint after 20 years, I usually remember something, however minor or vague.

I enjoyed this one a lot. It features Jimmy heavily, which definitely contributed to that enjoyment. There’s also quite a lot of Arutha, at least compared to the last several books, and lots of fun dialogue. The story itself was quite suspenseful at times. There were some overly-convenient things, a fairly common occurrence in these books really, so I might have rolled my eyes a few times, but the story held my attention well. We also spend quite a bit of time with William, Pug’s son, a character who showed up quite a bit in the previous subseries which is set many years later but whom we never really got to know.

Unlike the first book in this subseries, this one is not based on a video game. However, it bridges the gap between that book and the third book which was also based on a video game. Although the most immediate problems are wrapped up by the end, there are still quite a few open questions. Much of what is introduced in this book is actually setup for the events in the next book.

I’m probably being overly generous with my 4.5 star rating. There’s nothing earthshattering or groundbreaking here, and it’s not even one of Feist’s best books if I were being completely objective about it. I just really had a lot of fun reading it and my ratings are almost completely based on my enjoyment level. I’m rounding down to 4 on Goodreads since I can’t justify 5 stars.

The comments in my spoiler tags will explain one other silly reason why this book made me so happy. Although it's a somewhat minor spoiler, it also spoils things in some of the previous subseries that are set chronologically after this one.

I remember being quite annoyed in Prince of the Blood when Arutha announced his intentions to send Jimmy to Rillanon to become the Duke there. I was so annoyed by it that it’s the main thing I remembered about the book 20 years later. We all knew Jimmy loved Krondor, knew the city like the back of his hand, was very loyal to Arutha, and had always aspired to become the Duke of Krondor. So why on earth would Arutha send him to Rillanon? He does end up Duke of Krondor many years later in the Serpentwar Saga, but the business with him being sent to Rillanon was never explained or even really mentioned again from what I remember.

Well, that’s explained in this book -- twice. Even though the explanation was written later, it didn’t feel shoe-horned in because it tied with things mentioned in those earlier books and felt like a perfectly logical explanation. Having the satisfaction of that 20-year-old-annoyance being resolved would have been worth the time spent reading this book even if I hadn’t enjoyed anything else about it. This makes me wonder if maybe I somehow missed reading this book altogether the first time around. I thought I had read it, but between not having made such an obvious connection and not remembering anything else about this story, maybe I didn’t. Since this book was written later, it also made me wonder if it was added because it was something Feist himself had wanted to clarify, or if it was a response to fan reactions because other readers were as annoyed by it as I was. ( )

This book follows on pretty much directly from the events in 'Krondor: The Betrayal' but the castoff characters has been widened out a bit as we get to meet William, Pug's only natural child,. in his first outings as a junior commander in Arutha's military.. This time the Nighthawks, or something very similar to them, are back mixed in with a load of shapeshifting mages - what's not to like! ( )

Disappointing. ( )