As per usual, you get a better feeling with the first book of a series than with the second. I don't know exactly why, but the most controversial book or books in a series are the middle ones. The beginning can always be three things: amazing, meh and worst ever. Based on that, you decide whether you're going to read it. Amazing usually indicates you are going to love the other books also. If you like it enough to start it, you're probably going to invest a lot of yourself in that installment. The first book predicts how you're going to feel about the characters, what imagery you like best and how much you love the action. The last book in series, you're lucky if it closes right. If there's a bad end, kicking and screaming and whimpering will be your first options, then you're going to consider burning the book at a public bonfire. If it's an amazing end to an amazing series, you will have the same first three options: kicking and screaming and whimpering, then you're going to get in a fetal position and hug the book until you fall asleep. Yep, that's how it works. But when it comes to the middle works, that's tricky. The author has to constantly remember what the story line is and how to keep it intersting, while at the same time be conscious that he has to leave some of the action for future installments. Now, that's a tough job. In Krondor: The Assasins , Feist remembers. Feist did his job and kept it thrilling, amazingly accurate from the point of view of fantasy and pretty much in connection with everything. What I really like about his writing, now that I read the second installment (and am currently reading the third and last): he mimics the language of that "time" really well and he follows the characters really well. For that, I'm going to read the third book and see how he ends this little piece of his puzzle.
Second book in the Riftwar Legacy is another top notch fantasy/adventure. Story continues with more woes for Prince Arutha and the city of Krondor. Death and mayhem continue and a visiting Duke and his family are targeted for magic and murder. It's up to former thief Jimmy The Hand, now Squire James, to team up with Magician Pug's soldier son William and tough army captain Tregger to enter the den of snakes and do their best to make sure the assassin Nighthawks and their sinister allies are ripe for the picking when Arutha arrives with a army of soldiers. Book 2 is loaded with all sorts of action and suspense with vicious surprise attacks, evil magicians, conjured creatures, a hidden enemy stronghold with a dark secret and Squire James and co. are thrust in the middle of it all. It's a rapid fire page turner with all the adventure and intrigue you've come to expect from Raymond E. Feist! A really entertaining book with a plethora of engaging characters that is hard to put down.
What do You think about Krondor: The Assassins (2000)?
What an ominous ending!! I liked this middle book even more than the first book! It was a lot more exciting! Jimmy the Hand is a wonderful creation and William is quite likable as well. Not to mention the surprise cameo of my favorite character, Amos Trask! The plot unfolded more creatively and in a much more exciting manner than the first book and I am interested to see how everything will be solved in the third part - though, really, this book did not seem to connect to Krondor, The Betrayal as much as I would have expected, but perhaps the third volume will link everything together.
—Victoria
It was a real relief returning to this series after pausing for a while to read the abomination that is S. by Doug Dorst. Don't touch that, it's utterly crap.Assassins continues a period of writing for Feist that you can tell was very difficult. The flow and grandeur of his usual prose is somehow missing in this series, I don't mind admitting. It doesn't really detract, to be honest. The story rumbles straight on from Betrayal quite neatly. If anything the plot in Assassins is more stripped down
—Simon Barron
The Moredhel army has been thwarted in their mission to get hold of the Lifestone. Back in Krondor, a spate of murders and attempts on a visiting dignitary's life get Prince Arutha concerned. Jimmy the Hand employs his considerable skills to uncover the reasons and arrives at the conclusion that Nighthawks are to blame once again. Their pursuit takes him, along with William and Arutha, to an abandoned fortress in a desert, where things get out of hand. Mostly because, in addition to hundreds of assassins, the lair turns out to be harboring a Demon as well. It takes all of Jimmy's shrewdness, William's courage & Arutha's calm leadership to vanquish the Demon and most of the Nighthawks. At the end, we get a hint of much greater, not to mention much darker, powers at work behind the Nighthawk's activities.As expected from the second part of any trilogy, the book sets up the series nicely for the final book of the trilogy. Considering the number of unresolved questions raised by this book, 'Tear of the Gods' should be a cracker. The writing is what I've come to expect from Feist. Uniformly well-written, although at times, it seems like he's holding back his best stuff for the finale. This is why the book comes across as just good, rather than spectacular.
—Kailash
