I couldn't tear myself away from this one. I'm sure every nice thing there is to be said about Hobb's writing has already been said, but while I was reading I couldn't help but think how beautiful her prose is, and still plain enough that it takes no extra effort to comprehend every word. It flows so easily off the pages. I fear I am hooked, and nothing could stop me from diving headlong into the rest of the series as soon as I finish writing this.

As much as I think his character is generally interesting, Marius just isn't a compelling narrator to me. Almost madly, he consumes and learns all he can through the ages, but never thinks to change himself, wanting only to mold and manipulate everyone he loves, which is, of course, one of his many fatal flaws. And I love how flawed he is, how he believes himself to be a teacher, but never really sees how much of a hypocrite he is, and can't help but talk himself into being miserably and utterly alone. Unfortunately, all of the interesting parts of this tale were already told by Armand and Lestat in books before this one. Marius is also constantly fumbling baddies left and right, it's kind of crazy? How are you gonna live for thousands of years and still have zero swag? And I know the nature of the series is that most of the novels are published in this interview sort of format—or at least one character telling their life story to another—which is fine, whatever, but Marius meeting Thorne and talking at him for 400+ pages about stuff the reader mostly already knows was a weird choice. I don't know that I gained much from his perspective. There were really no stakes once all the names were ones I recognized from the narrative's present timeline so, up until the last 70 pages or so, it was a bit of a chore to keep myself engaged. The time period and the always-wonderful writing really carried the story for me. With each installment I dearly miss my beautiful wife Louis de Pointe du Lac, but at least Blood and Gold wasn't another David Talbot joint, thank god. On to the next.

This was such a fun story; I almost wish it was somehow a series so I could keep reading more of these characters' adventures. Like others have mentioned, I wasn't expecting this book to be so funny, but so glad it was. The humor and the swashbuckling and the light-hearted romances compliment the setting so well. Reading it felt like staring at those old illuminated manuscripts in huge ancient books they keep behind glass in museums, where you have to really work to decipher the old english, and your eyes are always drawn back to all the charming little drawings of weird, fantastical creatures in the margins. Now that I've read it once and have defined all the unfamiliar words along the way, I'm so eager for a reread.