And now our urban fantasy relocates to Elphame (so is it still urban fantasy?). Moving the story to Chandrakar and other lands along the Road was a logical next step, but the large number of POV characters made it difficult at times to remember who was where, with whom, and what they were after. It didn't help that it'd been a few months since I read The Sword of Maiden's Tears, and I'd forgotten the details of the political situation in Chandrakar, which is useful for understanding what's going on in this book. I enjoyed reading this (fantasy! magic! characters over 30 years old!), but it felt scrambled in parts. Not enough to completely lose the reader, just enough to be annoying. Still, it was fun. Definitely read The Sword of Maiden's Tears before tackling this book, though. ( )

This one is concentrated in the otherworld of Faerie. Ruth finds her way into faerie through a gate in the basement of the library she's working in. This book works as a bridging novel to the rest of the series and you can see where the setups are for conflict and where there are going to be issues that will have to be worked out before the characters achieve their goal. I liked Nic tho! ( )