A review by katy_bee
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott

2.0

This was ok for me. I enjoyed the initial set up. The overall book was quite long and the pacing and character focus felt a bit unbalanced. There are a lot of characters to keep track of. There were a few chapters focused on the "actress" and she was introduced very early but her involvement in the plot and with other characters was minimal and her story petered out. I didn't feel interested in her or Rodney. Meanwhile Valourhands and Ferenson actually felt much more significant by the end but seemed to come out of nowhere. I guess you don't need to follow all characters from start to finish but it felt clunky.

The unfolding of the plot also felt clunky to me, there were some potential "mysteries" that unfolded without a big reveal but also without being clear from the start. A few other bits of plot weren't particularly clear to me and I felt a bit unsatisfied that some of the magic just "was" and there was some Deus ex machina that didn't grab me.

I won't be reading the rest of the series but at least this one came to a fairly defined conclusion.