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The second book of the Paladin’s Legacy series is structured much like the first: Five different threads with only limited mobility between them flowing through the entire book. This is the type of thing can can get on my nerves (Game of Thrones gets lower ratings from me for having three different main—not major, main—plots), but Moon pulls it off quite well so far in these books.

This time, Kieri Phelan, new king of Lyonya, forms the primary arc, with the book starting with him, and getting a half-coherent warning that all is not right in the elven court. Trying to sort that out forms the basis of much of his action. There isn’t much that can be done at first, but it comes full circle and is part of the climax of the book, though it’s not completely resolved, showing that Kieri and Lyonya is probably the most central part of the series’ plot as a whole. Second-worst is the precipitating events for the climax come a bit out of nowhere, though saying more ahead of time, and not going in odd directions would be a bit of a challenge. Once over that hump however, everything else flows quite well and naturally.

In fact, the weakest part of the book is the fact that a lot of time is spent without a lot seeming to happen. It looks like it’s probably best to see all five as one story with some concessions to being printed in five parts. From that point of view, this is all early in the middle of the story, and things are still being introduced. For instance, Count Andressat moves from minor character to one of the more prominent sub-plots this time. It’s also an interesting sub-plot lore-wise as we get a glimpse into the distant past and colonization of Aarenis (a theme that also recurs in a different subplot).

Overall, the structure of the book is a little weak, with the plot occasionally feeling jumbled, but there’s a wealth of interesting characters, and little bits of action all throughout the book (largely thanks to Arcolin’s company). I wouldn’t recommend picking this book up first, but I don’t think it’d be that hard to start here either.