What this book does very right:

It's almost a three musketeer's kind of tale without the humor, a close band of mercenaries working their way across Feist's world until they get trapped by circumstance and some nasty Baronial politics and a snowstorm. Much later on, it DOES become a murder mystery, but the title is misleading, masquerading as big plot point without ACTUALLY being the reason for the novel.

It is, however, a pretty damn delightful novel full of great details, very well developed characters, and a slow burn that reminds me of an enormously entertaining backstory for a series yet to come. I'd read a LOT more of these guys if I ever get the chance.

The murder mystery DOES make sense, however. Being a mercenary and keen on keeping one's skin really can be a job for someone bright and analytical, and I definitely saw a lot of that throughout the novel. You might say that this is the beginning of a great Mystery series that just happens to be set in a fantasy world.

The genre mix was really pleasing. It just might not have been packaged right. Or readers may have wanted something more LIKE the other Feist novels.


The bad, assuming you think it is bad:

This is almost nothing like the other Feist novels. There is no big magic, big battles, demon invasions, or recognizable characters... except in passing conversation. If I wanted nothing but Feist, I might be disappointed.


If I wanted good fantasy with a careful and slow progression of characterization and depth of story, then I really needed to look no further. :) ( )

Murder in LaMut is the second book in the Legends of the Riftwar subseries, a trilogy of books co-written with different authors and set during Feist’s original Magician. The co-author of this book is Joel Rosenberg, whose books I’ve never tried.

I’m hoping this was the low point of the larger Riftwar Cycle series, because I found it pretty boring. There just isn’t much going on for most of the book, at least not that interested me. Had I been invested in the characters, I wouldn’t have minded if the story was light on action or events, but I didn’t care for the characters either. I didn’t dislike them, but there wasn’t anything about them that grabbed me.

The title of the book implied to me that this would be a murder mystery, or something similar. I therefore expected the murder to happen or to be discovered near the beginning of the book and I expected the rest of the book to involve piecing together clues and/or dealing with the aftermath. That’s not how this book flowed at all. I often enjoy having my expectations thrown off and being surprised, but that didn’t do anything for me this time. We start off learning about a character who seems to have had a set of unlucky accidents, and some people think they might be more than just a coincidence. They assign three mercenaries to guard him, and those are the characters we follow for most of the book. There isn’t actually a “Murder in LaMut” until (putting the % in a spoiler tag for people who don’t want to know) 74% into the book! Since the title proclaims there’s a “Murder in LaMut”, it wasn’t a surprise and felt very anti-climatic when it finally happened.

I’m not even a huge fan of murder mysteries, but I was so happy that something finally happened and it was finally time for our characters to solve the mystery that I found the rest of the story more interesting. However, I was pretty annoyed at the end. An innocent man was killed for the murder because the people investigating didn’t bother to be sure of their facts and missed the extremely obvious fact that the victims were drugged. Admittedly, the completely wrong people were put in charge of the murder investigation, so it’s not surprising they bungled it.

From the author’s notes at the end it sounded like the three mercenary characters who featured in the story were based on characters from Rosenberg’s own work. Someone familiar with his work and those characters might appreciate this more than I did.

It wasn’t a horrible book, but my attention wandered a lot and the ending was a disappointment. One thing I did enjoy was how the author(s) phrased some things. I chuckled several times when a turn of phrase struck me funny. I’m giving this 2.5 stars based on my low interest in the story, but rounding up to 3 on Goodreads for the humor. ( )

Ik weet eigenlijk niet goed wat ik van dit boek moet vinden. Kon er niet goed inkomen, had geen duidelijk idee wie en wat in dit verhaal. Heb er dan ook langer over gedaan dan de andere boeken in deze serie.

In essentie was het een boek over een mysterie/moord/huurlingen. De moord werd echter zo'n 80 pagina's voor het einde van het boek gepleegd, dan zijn er de benodigde pagina's besteed aan het ontrafelen en het oplossen van de moord. De rest van het boek (zo'n 250 pagina's) is vooral besteed aan het opbouwen van het verhaal. Minimale actie.

Waarom dit boek onder de fantsasy-noemer valt is me een raadsel. Zou het eerder onder mysterie/suspense plaatsen, maar dan valt het weer te veel buiten de overige boeken van Feist.

Dit boek was geschreven in samenwerking met [a:Joel Rosenberg|8593|Joel Rosenberg|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1307113706p2/8593.jpg], en misschien ligt daar het probleem wel.


( )

Another book in the Legends of the Rift War, the shared worlds stories shared between Feist and other authors. In this case, the guest author is Joel Rosenberg and in this particular case most of the story is Joel's, from the three leading characters to the situation. It's basically set in the city of LaMut. Although it's set in Midkemia, the story itself is basically a 'closed room' mystery. OK the room is a city, but it's a city cut off by feet deep snowdrifts Durine, Kethol and Pirojil are mercenaries - not all that uncommon in a war that had been dragging on for years now, but they weren't members of a company, but a small team of just the three of them. But, as mercenaries, the trio were getting jittery about the way the war was going and were planning to get out. The Earl's Captain was OK with their leaving = three men would barely be missed. But, if they would be so kind, could they undertake one last task; escort the Lady Monegreen back home to her dying husband, oh and act as bodyguards to Barron Morray, the Barron Mondegreen's opponent in the upcoming... debate in the forthcoming Council that would provide the next Earl of LaMut..At first the job has its perks and only a few downsides but the trio find themselves holding embarrassing information about their betters. And they were only lowly mercenaries so they decide to run before that storm stops all movement. And then the threats against Morray turn out to have a depressing basis in fact as the baron is eviscerated in his bed...
With their principle dead, the trio are forced to turn investigators in a city becoming ever more on edge as the various mercenary groups realise that, not only are they stuck in the city, the only person who knows how to open the payroll safe has just been killed.
As a standalone novel, this is good and the fact that its set on Midkemia pretty much irrelevant ( )

Not worth my time. ( )