Perhaps the biggest compliment to this book was the fact that I didn’t ditch it the minute Shadow of Night was released. What can I say? I’m enjoying it. It’s interesting to read about a guy who grew up as a poor boy and suddenly learns that he has wealth and status, and the responsibility that comes with being a title-holder in a feudal system.

There are also two very strong women in the story At first, the author continues with the “women are so mysterious and somewhat shallow” line of thinking, but now, at half-way through the book, he is starting to quit this. The women are very strong, mentally and physically, and I appreciate that.

Now, about religion: in the Bible, God refers to Himself as a “jealous god” and one of the Commandments is to “have no other gods before me.” One of the things that stuck with me from my World Religions class was the professor’s assertion that Christianity is not technically monotheistic. His main evidence was that, if God was the only one, why would He ask us not to choose a different god? I grew up believing that this commandment implied that we should not treat secular things (our jobs, hobbies, habits, etc.) as gods – we should not worship them as gods. Still, the idea that there might be other actual gods competing for our worship was intriguing. In this book, there are gods competing for the mind of the wizard, whispering to him and helping him in the hopes that he will give himself over to them. The only way to stop these gods from fighting for him (and making him go insane in the process) is for him to magically link himself with a human – when he dies, the person he is linked to will die, and vice versa. Perhaps this has been covered in fantasy literature before, but I hadn’t yet encountered it, and I’m curious to see how this turns out.