Mark Henwick

The first book does pretty much everything right. The things I didn't like are almost all down to a pure dislike of certain plot devices in general.
I am in a bit of trouble with the later volumes because they suffer from many of the minor nitpicks I regularly complain about in other books and which I site as reasons for being only a 3 star read, but somehow this series is engaging in a way that makes it much easier for me to look past minor problems so it doesn't seem fair to rate them "just" 3 stars as well.
I guess this is because, contrary to this series, most other series just don't have much to offer beyond a predictable plot which often is littered with clichées.
Later books keep the spirit but slip up repeatedly on mostly minor details every now and then.
Sadly as in basically every series, those become more noticeable as the series goes on. It's hard for me to tell if that's mostly because there is just so much more the author might have forgotten about but it feels like he grows a bit sloppy over time.
I enjoyed it a lot anyway just because they all avoid major problems almost all series of this kind suffer from.
Another big plus is the absence of obvious patterns over time that are just being repeated. Every book in the series has a unique and unpredictable plot mainly just by virtue of avoiding clichée plotlines that offer themselves naturally and apparently become irresistible to most authors eventually.
The final part that kept me reading was a complex political intrigue. Most books struggle with that especially over time in later books. There are many pitfalls and it takes a lot of planning and organization to pull off a convincing knot of conflicts with many parties each with their own agenda.
This series pretty much nails it.
Finally, I just didn't have this usual series fatigue I suffer from with almost all other series I've read so far. I was always engaged.
To address the problems I mentioned above, some of the rules around the magic evolved over time, aspects that were mentioned in passing sometimes vanish or others are stretched beyond their original definition. This usually is a symptom of discovery writing. In this case, it didn't bother me much as these slight rule changes are mostly brought up well in advance and in most other cases it feels more like a mistake and not like a cheap rule-change to make something happen.… (mehr)