Glen Cook did one heckuva job with this book - it answered a lot of questions I had about Garrett's painting of Ellenor hanging in his office (This happens when one reads a series out of sequence) as well as delving deeper into his relationship with Morley. While a little dark, this book is still full of action, ghosts, walking corpse's, magic, trolls and about anything else that makes a fantasy novel worth reading, which this book certainly is. gmb 3-25-20