The first thing that struck me about this book was the highfalutin’ style. Too many words. Too many facets to those too many words. Big ones where little ones would have had more impact. But I got into the story eventually and noticed that less. Unfortunately, over the course of the whole book you pretty much get setup only. Some stuff happens, yes. A few things are resolved, mostly, but the rest of the story is in the four books coming up. And I’ve read books like that, you know, and enjoyed them… but at the same time there was always a sense that an episode had been started and begun, rather than a feeling of a 200-page prologue. I don’t think I’ll bother with the rest.

(Oh, it’s about a guy from a post-apocalyptic, nouveau-medieval world where there’s a guild of torturers who get new apprentices by raising the children of their victims. Yeah, that sort of thing.)