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This book, more than any other, felt like Garrett being led around by the nose by more talented people i'd rather be following, and being scolded for not being perceptive by everybody and their sister. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Another thing that made this book hard to follow at times is the sheer size of the cast. Over the series, a lot of characters have been introduced into Garrett's life. It seems every single one of those characters made at least an appearance in this story. Plus a whole bunch of new characters are introduced. I think that this subplot actually detracted from the end of the book. I mean, having one girl die in Garrett’s arms would make a decent, emotional ending. Having two girls die in his arms, one after the other, seemed a little like overkill. Especially when the main emotional blow of Hagekagome’s death was something along the lines of: ‘What? His dead brother’s dog? Uh, that’s... sweet? I guess?’ But instead she's killed off, to literally no effect. No one emotes. Sure, Shadowslinger says something to the effect of 'take time to sort out your feelings' and there's a minor time skip and all, but it isn't enough. Not for me at least. And then she's replaced like fifteen percent of the way by another sorceress off the Hill palling around with Garrett, guiding him through all these various interactions and getting him debugged after his run in's with Relway and company. Why the hell couldn't that have been Strafa!? Maybe let us get to know the woman who ousted Tinnie in the span of one fetching book!For a novel that had very little real action, at least compared to the earliest novels in the series, this moved pretty fast for me. Lots of delving into characters not given much time in the past, as well as areas of TunFaire only hinted at previously. I enjoyed the by-play of some of the marginal characters who finally had a chance to take Center Stage. On the middle (?!) side: There are some, er, inventive language choices that I don't think worked all that well. (Mad skills? Really?) and there are some intriguing new mysteries and characters that are only teased at. But there is also quite a bit of character growth; Cook has obviously given some attention to each of the main supporting casts' roles and growth and it plays well. This is going to be one of my favorite Garrett novels once I read it for the second time. It was so stressful the first time that I kept having to put it down to catch my breath. Good interaction between our old favorite characters, an interesting story and more of Garrett bulling through all problems to a solution. So why was it stressful? In the first couple of chapters, Strafa dies. Garrett’s response to this: Be briefly angry. Initiate investigation. Walk around woolgathering while the mysteries are cleared up by other people. The end.

Perhaps the biggest lost opportunity, however, is that we are finally on the Hill and have a chance to get deep into the aristocracy that has been on the outskirts of so many of these novels and I just didn’t feel like Cook took advantage of that situation. Finally, the mystery was very weak. The bad guys are inept at best. Their motivation was weak and felt contrived. Garrett seemed to have more problems solving this mystery because of distractions in his persona life and because the bad guys were doing things in a more random (idiotic) fashion than any logical person would do. Which, honestly, was a bit of a disappointment in itself. I mean, hung-over Garrett is a delightful common theme in these books. What is the world coming to when hangovers are just medicated away?) On the plus side: this is a Garrett novel. It's funny, fast-paced, full of interesting characters and odd quirks and the vibrant, so-weird-I-want-to-go-there city of Tunfaire. I mean, if you liked the previous Garrett books, you're going to read this one and you're probably going to enjoy it. However, I can't help but like the Garrett series, even if we're now at 14 books with no real end in sight. There's just something oddly charming about them, and about Glen Cook's often peculiar, and quite stylish (not always good, mind you), way of writing.John Stretch’s ratmen do more investigating than Garrett does in this book. Not to be racist, (ratmen are people too!) but we expect more from you than that, Garrett. Seriously, Garrett's fiancee/wife is murdered and the emotional fallout is less than when he broke up with Tinnie Tate. I kept waiting for some kind of emotional breakdown, but ol’ Garrett just plods on. He does have a single night’s drinking, but even that doesn’t hurt; magical hangover medicince mitigated the effects. And while i'm on the subject of Garrett's inner thoughts, what was up with everyone breaking him out of his thoughts all the time? His thoughts never really took up real time before, and honestly they don't really have to, so why now? He was broken out of some genuinely insightful thoughts for no real reason. It wasn't humorous and i honestly didn't appreciate everyone stopping the investigator from y'know, investigating. And then people had the nerve to roll their eyes at him for being slow!? Let the man think, you dinguses!