Paced well, structure is airtight, and it reads like butter on a pancake. The Classic High Fantasy tableau on display and all the shoelaces are TIED (but not with a double-knot). The underlying championing for both truth and storytelling within this adventure is quite endearing. The women in this story 100% dominate my focus and sustain an overwhelming majority of quality character moments. Coming from the dude-fest duo of honorable thieves from Riyria Chronicles and Riyria Revelations, this is a much-welcome addition. The limited third-person narration (as always) makes for fun moments of description; when flipping into a chapter where a different party first sees someone we've spent plenty of time with but never actually visualized, something about that is so fun.

This is the start of a "new" (2016) series from Sullivan, and although it's all released and waiting for me, I'm starting to see the cracks in my love. I may currently just be more-so in a mood to be challenged. As polished as this series undoubtedly is, I will come back at a later date.

These characters are similar to those three protagonists in Riyria, just kinda muddled up and swapped around with new names and origins. In defense of this, I find it appealing and heartwarming to think on how all the worthwhile values of heroes are cyclical (this takes place 3000 years before Riyria if I'm not mistaken). I'll always need those heroes and plights to fall back on.