Royal Assassin

I think I need to complete the trilogy to really know what I feel about this book. As seems common with trilogies, this second book feels less a novel in its own right, more a sequence of events to setup the final book.

The story is more claustrophobic than the first part, taking place in largely one locale, with only a couple of excursions into the wider world. Indeed, the action takes place in so few locations, this could almost be a stage play. It feels slightly odd that when one character leaves on A Hero's Journey To Discover Mysteries - a topic that would be the center of other books - the entire subplot happens entirely “off screen”. Maybe the third book will cover this in more detail.

There is also not a huge amount of progression in the story itself; as others have noted, FitzChivalery seems to spend an awful lot of time feeling miserable and sorry for himself, although, given the events around him, this is not too surprising. Having said that, all events lead to an ending is certainly climatic and the setup, I hope, for some form of renaissance in the final book.

That is not to say that this is not a well written and, at times, absorbing read. The world is well drawn and the sequence of events well plotted. I just hope that the final book pays off in bringing things to a satisfying conclusion.