An enjoyable book but largely pointless.
There are characters that you can like. Not many that you can dislike. Some are vaguely sympathetic; most, you simply don't care.
The idea of legal cases being settled by sword fights is... interesting... but not a key element of the plot. The hero could as easily have been a fencing instructor, with someone determined to call him out for a duel.
The magic is interesting. Well,certainly the magic practitioners are interesting... If, in fact, any of them are really practising magic! It is still a bit uncertain.
So I read the blurbs for books two and three of the trilogy. And found no evidence of a conclusion! Book one raises some questions, some mysteries, that seem -- to me -- to be essential to the series. The blurbs give no indications that the mysteries are solved. Or even, not, solved.
We reach the end of book one and our hero goes on to... another adventure.
There may be a more coherent plot across the three books... I enjoyed book one enough to want to find out.
I enjoyed the book -- even though a lot of it is a how-to manual for middle-ages war and civilisation! (War and civilisation? Would it be enough to just write, civilisation? It is very hard to separate the two.) A manual with plenty of entertaining social commentary. Anyway...
Parker knows his/her stuff but a lot of the technical detail is too much. The idea of the Fencer occupation is great but largely pointless. The book is a detailed tale of the sack of one great city. I'm worried that the next books will be separate stories rather than a trilogy.
That said... read the book :-)
Despite its faults, it's a good book. I enjoyed it. I look forward to getting hold of the rest of the trilogy.
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