I bought this after being badly disappointed by the majority of the fantasy genre. I was on a quest for some well-written, original fantasy and was heartened to read in the author’s note at the beginning that McIntosh is a friend of Robin Hobb and that Hobb (whose work I adore) has encouraged her writing.

After a couple of chapters I was about ready to give up – the editing is very sloppy, with blatant typos and poor sentence structure. The quality of the writing, characterisation and world building is mediocre, to say the least, and there were several highly predictable plot points.

The book was redeemed somewhat by a couple of interesting twists that I didn’t see coming (the exact nature of Myrren’s “gift” being one of them), and McIntosh’s brutal and sometimes unexpected treatment of her characters is occasionally reminiscent of George R R Martin. However, on balance I’m not sure I’ll bother reading the rest of the series unless I can find it in the library.