First of all, it was really annoying that this book doesn't have a map. I felt so lost when they were talking about locations and travel - which they do a lot! 
 
The Kindle version of it I was reading also had really weird formatting, there were weird paragraph breaks (sometimes in the middle of a character's speech) and loads of typos. 
 
Aside from these points, this was a solid, standard fantasy story. And herein lies my issue with it, it was just bog standard. If I were asked to describe the typical fantasy book, this would be it. And as a person who reads a lot of fantasy, there just wasn't enough interest for me to want to continue this series. 
 
Something was lacking throughout, which I think was potentially due to the character work. I felt like I didn’t really care what happened to the characters, and I wasn't that invested in where things were going. 
 
I've also seen so many reviews calling this a 'dark' book, but it isn't at all? Yeah, Glokta occasionally tortures people (like twice in the entire book), but apart from that? When I think dark fantasy, I think of true emotional turmoil, blackmail, forced hands, true and believable life and death situations, dark and complex themes that are reflected in real life. This had none of that, or if it did it was very lukewarm. 
 
The ending solidified my belief that this isn't the series for me, it was just meh. The long fight scene didn't do much for me, and made me realise the stakes never felt that high throughout the book.

At the beginning with the gang's 'death' I was excited for a book where characters stayed dead. As soon as they were 'back to life' the stakes were immediately lowered for me, and it seems like it's a series where you know the main characters will always live, which just doesn't do anything for me! I can only get interested and emotional about fights/wars etc. when there's actually a chance of the characters dying, without that chance it's all just words. I also thought that it took the impact out of what was a truly great book opener.

 
A couple of years ago I probably would have continued this series without thinking about it, but I'm trying to read more consciously now, and I feel there are other books out there that I'd enjoy a lot more than I would continuing this series.