I really enjoyed the characters in this story. The original concept had me thinking the protagonist was going to spend much more time roughing it out the forest, but I really enjoyed the way the story went. Lots of politics and intrigue, but not so complicated you couldn’t keep up. Interesting evolution choices.

I get particularly annoyed when characters don’t make obvious choices, and that only happened once in this story for a minor plot point and there was a reason not to do it. I consider that a big win for good well thought out story telling and a protagonist that doesn’t fumble there way through a story with some broken “cheat skill”. On that note the character has a special skill but it doesn’t seem stupid overpowered, at least not yet.

The story leaves plenty of room for more books, which I eagerly anticipate.