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Parker's trick in making this plausible is his counterbalance of character: it is difficult not to sympathise with Ducas, Vadani, Vaatzes, Psellus and many of the others. Only the driven Daurenja raises direct antipathy - but even he is not without redeeming features. Feeling as we do for these people, we might fall more easily into the trap of believing as they do that they have no choice, but strangely it is our understanding of their motivations that has us railing at them: no, don't do it - don't you see... There are always other choices.
When I reviewed [[Evil for Evil]] (the second Engineer book), I was conscious of the shortcoming of not having read [[''Devices and Desires]]''(the first instalment) and on balance I hold to that view. If you haven't read either of the earlier novels - please do not start with this one. If the second & third parts are anything to go by - then the whole deserves to be read as a whole.
It is not a series of books, that simply happen to be focussed on the same characters - it is a single work, a long tale, the telling of which has to be broken down into manageable chunks. (If you'll forgive the 'technical' expression.)
