As I've said in my reviews of the first two books in this trilogy, you should really start with Coe's "Winds of the Forelands" quintet, which is set in a different part of the same world that this book is set in, and which deals with some of the same characters and issues. GREAT exciting books, richly detailed, fleshed-out characters - I just love them. The "Blood of the Southland" books are also highly enjoyable, though they have a somewhat different feel to them because there's less complexity and the action spans a smaller geographic range. But Coe has set these books in a creatively built world with an interesting magic system, and he avoids what I consider to be high fantasy cliches like wise elves and gruff dwarves and so forth by actually writing a story that is NOT a rip-off of Tolkien, like so many other fantasy authors end up doing. Again, as I said in my review of the previous book in this trilogy, I wish some of the plots had been expanded upon, but all in all my spouse and I loved these books and highly recommend them.