content: Finally a series of books that takes the time and does it properly. My feeling when I finished reading the Lord of the Rings was that it all finished too soon. Leaps are made, things just fall into place, characters suddenly learn what it is they're meant to do. Not so with these books. The characters are slowly coming into their own. Slowly learning their abilities and shaping their course. Brilliant. If the story is slow then it's as it should be, frustrating. It just makes it more worth while at the end of the day.