This was overall a fun but odd book for the series. After everything in the first 3 books this one seems too short. Its not actually a short book – but there are a lot of things going on at once and not a lot of progress is made in a lot of areas. It also ends on a worse spot than the first Lord of Rings movie – leaving you looking forward to the next book and also wanting to drop something heavy on the author at the same time. The background of some of the characters fills in more in very interesting ways and there are beginnings of hinting at the involvement of more “players” involved in the story background – something that has been very oddly missing.