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Title: Heavy-handed and muddled
Review: I have liked Lackey's other books, but this one just seemed ponderous. A typical girl-runs-away-from-home-has-to-survive-despite-hardships kind of book. What was especially annoying to me was how Rune kept "noticing" the hypocritical way the church conducted itself, and how all they really cared about was money. The book might have been saved for all that, but when Rune finally gets to the Free Bards, away from the oppression of the Church and Bardic Guild, she, and her new-found love, the leader of the Free Bards, seem to completely abandon their earlier characters. Lackey sums the "romance" up very neatly, not even bothering to take time for explaining developments in the relationship. And once Rune and Master Wren do have sex, they immediately "need to be married." Did Lackey just get tired of the book at the end? I just hope she had some other more interesting project to get to, because I would not read another book like this one.
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