This was a fun book. It was more a mystery than an adventure story, but it was definitely the kind of mystery one might encounter in a Dungeons and Dragons game. I really enjoyed reading it! I hope the next book is more of an adventure, but this was a nice treat!

Ok, now I have no idea what's been going on at the Lost Grove Inn. It doesn't make a lot of sense for fey to be so close to a city (of course, they are apparently an hour's walk from the inn). There must be some explanation. I'll be interested to see what it is!

Yay! Moyra picked up the clues and made sense of them! It's been really obvious that Pima was somehow involved in the whole mess, but no one had investigated her. But Moyra got it! Yay!

Now what the hell is up with Locky? Mechanical dragons don't need sleep, so what's going on? They don't usually eat tarts either. Maybe a spell or something? I really have no idea!

I'm really intrigued by finding out what is actually happening at the Lost Grove Inn. It's an interesting mystery so far. Obviously Pima is involved somehow, as are the two cloaked figures. The tarts seem like an important clue of some sort too, but I have no idea what they mean yet.

And where the hell is Zendric?

Ok, things are decidedly weird in this book. I kind of wonder where Zendric is in all this. And what the hell is up with Locky? I just feel so scattered! Maybe it's supposed to do that. I mean, clearly everything in the story is scattered and confused right now, so maybe I (as the reader) am supposed to be as confused as the Knights are. It so, it's working brilliantly!

I like this author so far. She also wrote Eye of Fortune, which has easily been one of my favourites in the series so far. She has reintroduced her fighter and cleric characters, who balance the otherwise woefully unbalanced party. I miss having a map, but appreciate the very D&Dish NPC names and sense of history. I'm very pleased with the book thus far.

This book left me with more questions that I started with!

Why did the knights have to protect the city's treasure *before* the sundering?
Why is it still being hidden?
Why has Lord Dardley never told anyone that the treasure is safe or given it back?
How did Nimrae change Zendric's staff into a powerful poppet?
Why didn't Zendric notice?
Why didn't Zendric tell them where the poppet was sooner if he knew where it was?
How long had he known were it was anyway?
Why could Nimrae change shape so easily but so imperfectly?
Why didn't he cast a shadow?
How did he gain power over Moyra, and how did she shake it off?
How did Nimrae find out what the Knights were doing?
Where was Torin through all this?
Will Breddo still have a job by the time we get to the next book, or will it have been forgotten?
Why the hell do people in Greyhawk know about Alexander the Great?
Why are griffon eggs made of stone?
Why did the ghosts wake up?
Why had they forgotten most of their battle skills?
What was with the telepathic wolf?

So many questions! This is not how I should walk away from a book!

Ok, I can totally buy that an army of ghosts could be raised by a determined necromancer (although I can not understand why zombies wouldn't have been better), but how did three people with no skills in the art of necromancy have raised several knight from the dead simply by saying "get up"? It just makes no sense! And why would Kellach collapse after a few light spells? Come to think of it, how did he cast the spell so many times in one day? Magic is very illogical in this book. It certainly doesn't follow the rules of magic in Dungeons and Dragons!

Do griffons speak Common? What is their usual alignment? Are the really supposed to be mortal enemies of horses? It seems very odd indeed!

Even though we've seen Zendric a few times now, I still feel like he's being kept conveniently out of the way. It's very annoying.

I also find it odd that the heroes appear to have little memory in this book. Previous strange experiences are forgotten, even when something obviously similar happens. Kellach casts a spell that he has cast before and the other two kids act as though they've never seen it before. Warnings are forgotten until the villain himself points out what they already should have seen. It's just crazy - like their brains have turned into sieves!

This book is interesting, but I still feel like the author has little respect for the main characters. Not only are they doing pitifully little to find the crypt that they are supposed to be looking for, but the story is treating them as though they were small children when they are not! They are supposed to be twelve and thirteen years old, but it is as though they are little more than five or six. I mean, I know that Moyra is very much a daddy's girl, but what father picks up his thirteen year old daughter? Lifts her feet off the ground as he hugs her, perhaps, but not actually pick her up! And her protests to be put down are exactly what a five year old wanting to be treated like a big girl would say! We are in the ninth book in the series - the characters deserve better, the audience most certainly deserves better and Wizards of the Coast should be ashamed of themselves for not having higher standards for their publications!

The plot of this book is so far pretty good, but the writing leaves something to be desired. The kids seem extra whiny and distractable (very player-like in a way) and the story moves through events very much like a child telling a story does - rapidly, without pausing for detail or even to ask logical questions. It just seems to lack something and part of the result is that the author seems to have little real respect for the characters (although she seems to be unaware of it - which is even stranger). I'm not sure what to think about it at this point. Hopefully it will get better.

Well, I'm only a chapter in, but so far it's fine. A few pages in and we are already into some kind of mysterious adventure! The description of this book doesn't make it sound very good, but I'm hoping that it's just a crappy description (since that does seem to happen fairly often).

Ok, the ending was very strange, but I still liked the book a lot.

Ok, this section of the book was pretty good. Not only did it show the kids getting it (finally), but it also gave good reasons for some of the things that bugged me. It logically explained Zendric being gone and Kellach and Driskoll being all but unable to see through Nahemah's charms. I like this book now. I knew that my hopes would have to pay off at least once in this series and a book that started out questionable would end up great! Now I just have to get my hands on the next few books!

The lesson at this point in the book is that one wizard and one rogue do not really make enough of an adventuring party to be terribly successful without a little luck and a lot of GM/author fiat.

Finally the characters are getting somewhere. It sounds like they may actually be setting off on a quest again (or at least a mini-quest), but it's so late in the book! Like the last book, this one feels like it's only just getting into the action. At least this story is fairly interesting, even if it is taking forever to get into.

I like that we are getting to see the kids actually use some of their class skills. Kellach has done a bunch of magic in this book, although what spell he is casting is occasionally unclear. I like that he has been limited in how many spells he can cast per day (implicitly, anyway), and that he has clearly been struggling somewhat with his will saves. Driskoll hasn't done much, but that seems to be largely due to him spectacularly failing his will saves. Moyra has not only made all of her will saves, but she has also used her hide and move silently skills, picked pockets (sleight of hand) and picked locks. It's really nice to see the rogue actually behaving like a rogue and using her range of skills! Now if only Driskoll used his bard abilities once in a while!

Slowly the kids are starting to wake up, but they still seem to be missing the biggest, most obvious piece of the puzzle, Jourdain. I can buy that the boys want too badly for her to be herself to believe it, but why doesn't Moyra seem to get it? Maybe she does, but Kellach doesn't know about it and, since we are sort of seeing the story through his eyes, neither do we. I'm also a little baffled by Lochinvar. What made him suddenly break? The whole thing is just strange.

This book doesn't feel much like and adventure, but it does feel like Dungeons and Dragons. I'm pleased that this author seems to have a good grasp of the basics of D&D, that makes a big difference. In the books that don't feel like D&D it is very distracting and detracts a lot from the story. At least this book has the basics.

Ok, this book is slightly frustrating at this point. It seems really predictable right now, and yet the main characters (with the possible exception of Moyra) are completely clueless! Why can't Kellach see what's going on? He has all the pieces I have and wizard intuition, so why does he seem so clueless? Maybe it's supposed to seem predictable and will end up surprising me. I sort of doubt that, but I would love if it turned out to be true.

Jourdain is very strange. I think that she's supposed to be that way, but that doesn't make it any less irritating. Her speech patterns in particular are really annoying. "My child" is very artificial and repetitive! I get that she's probably a succubus, but she's still really annoying. And somehow, our heroes are completely oblivious to to!

I can't decide how I feel about the beginning yet. Again I have to wonder about the kids and the townspeople. There is clearly mind-affecting enchantments affecting various people, so why doesn't anyone ever notice? And Zendric being called away felt awfully convenient. Hopefully the book will fix a lot of these problems (or show me that they aren't problems)! I really want this book to be good!

This book has one of the most Dungeons and Dragons-ish plots in the series thus far (Eye of Fortune and Secret of the Spiritkeeper were more D&D adventure-like, but most of the others were completely unlike real D&D adventures). The quest is interesting and I really hope that the growth that can be seen in the characters in this book carries through to other books as well. I really liked that they did this story this way. It is very interesting story-wise that they set it up so that the Knights must prove themselves worthy of the title after they have gotten more experience than they had when they got it. The idea of testing ability and worth like this works well for the world, genre and specific characters in this series. I am generally fairly pleased with this book, even if the beginning was far too long.