Beyond (The Founding of Valdemar, #1)

This book pretty much was just a very slow, very cautious implementation of a decades-old decision to run away from a tyrant ruler in secret. And because everything was done in secret, there was no action, just political games and secret meetings and secret signals.

I've only read The Mage Wars and The Last Herald-Mage trilogies by Mercedes Lackey, but I was expecting this series to be similar to those in terms of action and intensity. It was not. It was just on the cusp of boring, and you can tell it's just a set-up for the next book in the series. I already own the second book, but this first book lost all my interest in continuing with the series. Political secrets just isn't my kind of thing. It's a big reason why I tend to avoid anything even half-related to espionage, and if I had known how involved in this book it was, I never would have picked it up, regardless of my love for the first two (chronologically) series in this world.