ambyr

I enjoyed this more than any Vlad book since Dragon. I'm not necessarily sure that means it was a better book; just that it covers the time periods of Vlad's life that I'm most interested in. I also appreciate that the stories, despite involving gods and (possibly) Jenoine, were smaller scale. I like Vlad best when he's operating on the level of individuals. And I love the follow-up to Athyra, which remains (stubbornly) my favorite Vlad book.

I was a little frustrated at what I'll call slopping editing; people's descriptions didn't always match from one appearance to the next, and sometimes numbers didn't add up. Some of this can certainly be attributed to the layers of unreliable narrators, but I prefer my narrative unreliability limited to when there's a reason for the narrator to be less-than-truthful.

Like Jhegaala, I think this may be best appreciated on the reread. There were a lot of parallels and overlaps between the three stories, but one quick, fast-paced read left me unclear on how some of them fit together. Perhaps that will resolve some of my sloppy editing concerns, too.