I had been going through the series because the books were cheap and it was decent entertainment for my commutes. The first four books were nothing special but this is the first one that I thought the author got the formula right. My main problem with the previous books was that the hero was doing this big journey to try and defeat this massive enemy that threatened his home but he really wasn’t advancing very much to be able to defeat the enemy. This was the first book were I actually could sense that the hero was moving towards his goal in an appreciable way. The fact that it took five books to get there is annoying but that’s the problem with these long series books.