Feist’s characters have grown so far beyond the merely human that it is difficult to empathise with them. Pug and his family, who are at the centre of much of the story, are extremely strong magicians, and that is the focus of most of what happens. They have a few family interactions with each other, but mostly those seem like wooden actions of cardboard characters. The charming younger characters introduced in earlier books in this trilogy are largely neglected.

If you’re reading this particular edition of the book, be prepared to be frustrated. The book is littered with proofreading errors, missing or extra words, and sentences that start out saying one thing and skip to something else.