If I was reading this as a book, I would probably have given up. I was listening to an audiobook, however, and that makes a lot of difference, I've found. Especially if, like this one, the narrator is really excellent.

The story itself, though... Fairly predictable. Main characters tend to suffer from massive bouts of stupidity here and there. I'm sure the fact that Michael was a traitor was supposed to be a major plot twist, but that doesn't really work when one has guessed as much already at the beginning of the book. Richard having the enemy web and how it works explained to him in great and elaborate detail, immediately forgets this and wonders why his friends attack him. And of COURSE the confessor's power doesn't work on him because he's speshul and of COURSE the dragon actually ends up not wanting to eat him after all.

Contained an awful lot of torture and an awful lot of something that clearly wanted to be romance but fell a bit short what with the great floods of tears and a remarkable amount of sex for being a book in which nobody ever gets laid. Not consensually anyway. I'm sure if you were to do a word count of this book the number one most used word would be 'pain', followed by 'tears' and 'rape'.