[Nesacat]

I've come to this really late but I'm glad I got here eventually. Just finished reading Imperial Spy and it's a wonderful book. Am going to start Imperial Assassin when I get home tonight. The books are simply not available in stores here and I found this quite by luck. There are no more.

I loved Femke. She's very real and very solid. Yes she makes mistakes but you can see her mind working and the mistakes and continues learning. I really liked that. She's very human and doing her job the best she can and that including making mistakes every so often. She's not perfect and she's emotional about much that she has to do. I liked that. So many spies now are super people and you get tired of that after a while.

Really appreciated Malo being the man he was. He was not the classic bad guy for Femke to clash violently and spectacularly against. Again this made the book very different from many others. I could not hate Malo and in fact, respected him and his efforts to run his country and mete out true justice in a difficult situation a great deal.

I liked the way characters were built not just by describing them but describing the things they did in the past. Reynik's relationship with his father, Femke's time on the street. It painted a very vivid picture of both of them. Femke's character seemed to work very well with Reynik's. I learnt a lot about them when they were with each other. They seemed a lot more 'whole and real' than when they were with anyone else. I guess I've always been partial to characters that did not make a huge song and dance about their feelings but went ahead and did what needed to be done first, like Reynik here.

Am heading home now to start Imperial Assassin to find out what happens next. Fingers crossed I'll find Imperial Traitor before April.