Maybe I am too picky by half, but this was my first Parensky novel, and it really didn't inspire me to pick up any more. This book is too long - I felt that the prison sequence was necessary, but that the ending was just tacked on for a climatic confrontation between the bad guy and VI. The minor characters were entertaining, but I felt the villians to be one-dimentional. Entertaining, but not very substantive.