From Wizard Murdock to Captain John Black to Scar's brother Prince Robert, they resonate on both an intellectual and an emotional level. In the next book, Legacy of the Ancients , Scar becomes much more palatable. Sarti's prose smooths out, and he is able to weave the loose ends from the first book into a complex and suspenseful pattern. I began to realize what the other characters saw in him and why they continued to like him despite his selfishness. When Scar begins to care for people other than himself, and when seen through the eyes of the woman who loves him, his good qualities surface.
Legacy is a quest novel of sorts.
Sarti breathes new life into the oft-used ploy of having his characters proceed in the disguise of a travelling show. And when Legacy came to an end, it left me breathless and in an emotional state of my own. Not bad for a main character who started out so distant. By the third installment, The Lanterns of God , Prince Arn has matured enough to be wholly sympathetic, and Sarti's writing has matured enough to show Arn's faults without making him annoying. I was so absorbed in Lanterns that I read it in one sitting.