just the right balance of action versus plot progression to keep things interesting. A lot of different characters appear throughout the storyline which at first made the story a bit hard to follow, but I think the narrator did a good enough job making them sound different enough to allow me to keep track of everyone until they either died messily or became part of the main storyline. Having listened to the first 4 books as a publisher pack was definitely the right incentive to make me want to listen to the rest of the series.