Judging from the reviews I'm the only one, but I thought this was terrifically dull. Our main character, Jal, spends all his time thinking about sex and his own cowardice, yet every time he finds himself in a dangerous situation he blacks out and proceeds to fight with great skill.

It's beyond irritating to watch him constantly betray his friends, family, and companions for his own self interest when he ends up doing the right thing only when he doesn't remember it. Not getting Snorri to a good doctor because he lied about getting him released from the queen? Unforgivable, and never comes up again. When he tells another companion that mustard seed will help with whore pox but then thinks, oh wait, was it fennel seed? And then doesn't care ever again. Exasperating. He's a piece of shit, and doesn't grow at all over the course of the story.

I'm not a big fan of books that are entirely travel, so that may be why I found this so boring, but at the end of the day, I never understood why Jal went along on this mission. He bitched the whole way and I just longed for Snorri to punch him right in his stupid face.

I also hated that Lawrence used a lot of real places (referring to people as Nuban or Viking) but also made up a bunch. The discovery of train tracks made me think he was going for a Shannara thing, but it came across as laziness.