I bought this book hoping for your typical fantasy story, and was largely disappointed. Never mind that the back of the book for some reason focuses on the villain of the story, what really ruins this book is the author's choice to write it as if you're listening to a storyteller. Even this might have been bearable if the chosen storyteller weren't a person who insults the reader, wanders off topic in the middle of half the sections, and somehow knew far more than a person who is later introduced as a character in the story, should know. It pulled your right out of the story time and again. Had I been talking to this person in real life, I'd have walked away. As it is, I only finished the book because I wanted some recompense for having spent money on it.

Plotwise, the story moved along at a snail's pace due to all the information dumps from the storyteller, most of which were pretty boring. The book is basically a few groups of people all heading towards the same place, and you expect something to happen when they get there. A few small things do, but there was no real climax to the story before the narrator tells you to bugger off (and I guess, buy the next book). The villain was very evil, and the monk guy was very nice. Meanwhile, the villainess was extremely boring, and I'm confused as to why no one noticed that beheading killed immortals (when this kills almost every single supernatural being in existence). I did like the more otherworldly than usual portrayal of immortals, and that the book operated on a much longer span of history because of it.

I also really hated the introduction of 'frighteners and... whatever they were called, because once those were introduced the author lazily started saying things like, "His frightener was awake." to tell us someone was scared or worried. That moved the novel from 'just passable' into the 'unbearable' category. ( )