Status Updates From Ardneh's World (Empire of t...

A few great ideas, but terrible character work and the complete absence of followup with Rolf's sister.

There's an extremely significant omission in this book. At the end of the last book, there was a resolution to the plot of Rolf's missing sister, but it ended on a line of dialogue indicating that there was still something to resolve with her in the next book. But there is not a single mention of her name or even the word "sister" in the entire third book, even where it should logically have come up.

Catherine’s arm had a lifeless submissiveness in Rolf’s grip; it was a feeling that he had met before, on touching slaves, slaves who had had reason to take him for an Eastern master. It came to Rolf that in a sense this girl had now become his slave, his property, and there was a twinge of forbidden pleasure in the thought.

Our young hero Rolf is surprisingly excited at this prospect.