Certain things about the first book in this series were appealing (the seer aspects and the evil legion), while other parts felt cliche (using sex to grow in power). There were a couple of author shout outs to the LoTRs movies which made me laugh, so the author obviously has a sense of humor, but at time the wit of the main character was too over the top in difficult situations. Some writers can pull this off, like the writers of Buffy, where the sarcasm in tense situations worked, because she was a teenager, but the snippy comments by the main character in this book didn’t always come off as cute or appealing.