This book begins with a woman raising demons from skeletons, as a timid bard creeps up and begins gently drawing her story out of her; in turn, she divulges details about him that she should not know. By all rights it should have ended with their stories meeting together at the present, then proceeding together into a satisfying climax… but as her story dragged on and on, crammed with irrelevant detail and bloated with extraneous characters, I reached page 668 of 714 and realized that there was no way in this book we were going to reach the end of her story. Epic battles and inter-kingdom wars had been hinted at, and she’d barely graduated school. I felt extremely cheated and in no mood to read any further in the series. I was also not a fan of her culture, in which women with magic powers were required to train as warrior-geishas who could sing, dance, kick butt, and still simper and giggle around powerful men while entertaining them. Seriously. Meanwhile male magic-users have to join a killing squad with a high death rate. I was briefly interested when a male magic-using character showed up and wanted to train as a geisha, but we never learn where his story goes because 700 pages later we’re only a fraction done with the story. Definitely not continuing on with this series. (Unless someone tells me it gets more worthwhile.)