I've been enjoying these on audiobook. The male reader took a short while to get used to, but the things about his voice that initially annoyed me a bit, I hardly notice any more.

I'm enjoying the story, enjoying the fact that it's so complex and that there are so many different viewpoints. I'm really impressed that it was possible for him to keep all these straight and not get it all mixed up. There are so many loose ends after all!

The thing I've noticed, however, which is beginning to bother me a little is that RJ seemed to only be able to write very few types of women. Type 1, the strict and hard woman who believes that men are really little more than children and are to be ordered about or nothing will get done, and she'll happily switch anyone from top to bottom who dares disagree with her on anything ever. Type 2, the evil woman who takes pleasure in causing pain and suffering and not much else. Type 3, the simpering and not very intelligent little girl, who generally comes out whenever the plot calls for someone who isn't a baddie but whom we are still not supposed to like. All the women on 'our' side are Type 1. All the women who are Darkfriends are Type 2. No exception.

That's not woman. That's not how a woman thinks. That's not how a woman acts. Women are capable of seeing sense. We are capable of being wrong and not taking it as a huge personal affront, without resorting to calling all men fools and treating them like children. We are capable of taking advice from men without arguing. We are capable of, when being asked to do something by a man, actually doing it. Especially when it's something that doesn't really matter in the grander scheme of things anyway. We are NOT all stubbornly thinking that we know best at all times. We are not all carbon copies of each other like this. '

I really like the fact that he was trying to make his female characters strong women, but not ALL women are strong women, and some of these aren't really particularly strong women. They're just largely unreasonable. Nobody here is just genuinely friendly. Nobody here offers advice and guidance through gentleness and persuasion. It IS actually possible to write a strong female character without having her ordering everybody around at every turn and beating them over the head with a stick if they don't fall in line.

It gets a little tiresome.