It took me a while to grasp the setup of the Undying universe, where the power and person are separate entities who coexist. Coming into this book as a new reader, I at times wondered if I’d stumbled into book 2 or 3 in the series, as there was a fair amount of history and terminology I felt I’d missed. It was difficult to tell what details may have been told in previous stories versus what I was expected to pick up organically through the storytelling. Learning that this is the first book in the series left me a little unsettled. Not the best way to start out a new read. In fact, the entire first half was an exercise in patience, as I plodded methodically through scenes [...]