I fear that the memory of the first book coupled with my inexperience with the adult fantasy genre in 2018 is the only reason why I ever looked upon the first book in this series kindly. Or perhaps my memory is right and the first book was super entertaining with engaging writing and stakes and characters and world building - either way this book sucks ASS. 

I have never experienced such an EGREGIOUS example of telling and not showing. This Raymond E Feist thinks the readers are idiots and spells everything out in the most dull - yet somehow, in the LEAST informative- way. There was a six page stretch where “Declan understood” smth that was very obvious to everyone yet had to be spelt out to us, yet the whole Firemane magic system is a bunch of “nobody knows and we don’t understand” rubbish until LUCKILY some stranger magics his way onto a SECRET ISLAND AND SAYS “hey, I’ll teach you how to teach Hatu” AND THIS IS JUST ACCEPTED. HE WASNT THROWN INTO PRISON OR HOLDING OR NUN LIKE OMD NO INTERNAL LOGIC

And let me not even start on the characterisation. This is so BORING. Declan is this tsundere type stoic guy - a very interesting character if we got any insight into his actual emotional turmoil after his journey to got some bloody sand so he could become a SMITH gets totally derailed and his wife is murdered…. But we get nothing 🙂

Ok what about Hava, a spy who was told to always be aware that one day she might have to kill Hatu, her oldest friend turned husband, even if she loves him, even if he fathers her children, and now she has to live on a secret island because her husband is magic or something and heir to a dead kingdom - but we get nothing 😀

Hatu - who has literally been told he has magic and is the heir to a dead kingdom. NOTHING😐

What’s the point of having good elements of character driven stories, only to DRAGGGGGGGGGG the reader through the plot with absolutely no regard or interest in CHARACTER IM ACTUALLY IRRITATED