Juliet Marillier certainly has a knack for writing characters that you can fall in love with. And her writing style is a delight. I adore all her work, and am especially fond of Blackthorn and Grim. The plot of this, the third installment, was perhaps a little weaker than its predecessors, if only because it tried to cram too much into it - there were at least two quite different story arcs going on here. But both were important and both interwove together quite successfully. The ending felt a little rushed, alas, but was quite satisfying - so I had to read it twice :)

One thing I do appreciate is that when the reader has figured out the direction of the plot and is wondering why the characters haven't yet, the two of them (Blackthorn and Grim) get together and discuss it in a manner that suggests that it had occurred to both of them, but the implications of such a revelation was almost too great for it to be articulated aloud/even admitted to themselves until they were within each others company. Blackthorn and Grim spend a lot of time apart in this tale, and that is quite deliberate, for not only were there relationship arcs that Marillier wanted the characters to recognise, but also that if they were together and able to discuss everything they knew (indeed, if Grim were to meet Cara earlier on), then the mystery would have been solved super-quickly and there wouldn't be so much of a story to tell!