Review: This series keeps getting better and better.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 15, 2013
I read the first book after someone in a reading group recommended it, and I saw why they liked it, but the entire time I read it I felt like I was reading a MMO raiding groups biography instead of a story.  It was well enough put together for me to give the second one a chance however, and I am glad I did, because it took the roots planted in the first book and grew out from there into a wonderful world.  Book three in the series takes it another step further and almost made me forget that I had thought this was an MMO group all together.  The character development and world building is done very well, though sometimes I do feel like Cyrus acts more like a paladin than a warrior a lot of the time(especially where it concerns his "love" of Vara).  At times I find myself rooting for Aisling more and more as the book goes along(I mean how long can a guy deal with cold then warm for a few seconds then cold again for years before he finds comfort elsewhere, probably the biggest fantasy aspect of the story sofar;), but we'll see what happens in the next book.*spoilers*The first book introduced the concept that it was in fact possible to die given the right circumstances, and this book takes that idea and sticks a knife in it's back(literally).  All the sudden you have to be careful not to let these assassins stab you or you will die for good, and that's not an idea that would be easy to wrap your mind around if you were someone who knew you could fight as hard as you wanted because you could be brought back afterwards as long as they got to your body in time.  It seems odd to me that the fighting academy would not have taken this information into account when they were training their fighters, but still not enough of an issue to drop this story to four stars.I hope the next book is as good as this one was, and I also hope that Cyrus at least gets with Aisling before she dies heroically(just a guess on my part).