Cassie McCullagh

And he's sent away to live with this baby.

sort of shadow kingdom.

Yes, and this kingdom wields a lot of power in doing that, but covertly.

So he's sent to this school where you learn to be an assassin, mafioso type and slink through towns and collect information.

And there he makes two fantastic friends, one of which is a guy called Dante, who is much bigger than Hattu.

And there's also a girl, Hava, who has a special talent to kind of, well, what is she like?

And soon enough, these three are separated and they go out into the world and their odyssey begins, their destinies begin to unfold.

Harvard is sent to this school of the powdered women, which is where I think some of our disconcertion might come from because this is basically a sex college.

Of sorts, where students, both male and female, are taught the arts.

The ropes, yeah.

And, you know, that's an ancient tradition, I suppose.

Now, is that an issue for you?

Did you feel like this was just exposition, exposition, exposition and not actually a standalone novel on its own?

Well, I do actually feel unlike George R.R.

Martin, whose description seems to go on for pages and pages and you just, please give me some dialogue, dialogue, just anything.

I actually found the writing really quite at a high level.

Yeah, I think it is masterful.

One of the interesting absences from this first book, at least, in the Ghan world is that weird sort of magic or external forces possibly from outer space, which is such a feature of Raymond E. Feist's other work.

That medieval world that's constructed, we do see it across different cycles of books and across different authors.

What do you think that's about?