Clariel was a bit of a disappointment, but I found this to be a welcome return to form for the Old Kingdom books. I liked the new character Ferin quite a bit - a very positive addition to the cast. The romantic subplot of the book gets to feeling a bit rushed at the end though, like Nix has an end he's determined to reach whether he's built a sufficient foundation to believably reach it from or not. I'm trying to remember exactly how he handled it in Sabriel - it's been a little while - but I think this may not be a first offense for him on that front. Still, it's not egregious and it certainly hardly ruined the book for me. On the whole, I enjoyed this book quite a bit.