I was drawn into the first quarter of this book right away. Really thought it was intriguing and I think about 50% of the way through it started to flag and at 75% I couldn't figure out why it hadn't ended yet. Which is weird because it wasn't that long of a book, but it felt horrendously long by the end.

The first thing that really bugged me was that every character was in love with Rune for some reason--felt very Gary Stu. I had no idea who the hell the love interest was going to be because the companion thing went way beyond just brotherly love and flew into the land of jealousy--then just randomly took a 180 and Brand was like 'nevermind, I'm not interested'. What? Made no sense whatsover.

Rune... wasn't all that interesting. He reminds me a lot of Harry Potter, to be honest. He has the horrible backstory and the chosen one aspects and everyone loves him for some reason and he's stale like cardboard. Everyone around him is more interesting than he is.

In the end, I didn't like this book that much. Kind of sad that it flopped since it started out really strong.