Kamas Kirian
Perhaps if I was more familiar with the series it would have come across as a better read. But, having this as the introduction to the fantasy world Glen Cook created I didn't enjoy it. The only character that I cared for was Lord Ssu-ma, General of one of the antagonist armies. Ethrian didn't seem believable as a leader (perhaps previous books had back story on his education?), the 400 year old wizard came off as a petulant child, the women (other than Mist) seemed weak and not overly intelligent, and the politics was uninteresting. This isn't a long book and it still took me a week to drag myself through it. There was some good groundwork for an interesting world in Shinsan, and perhaps that was explored in other books. But, as a stand alone book, I can't recommend it to anyone. The ebook was formatted well with no obvious spelling or grammatical errors.