Meh. Just meh. I finished it, but overall I just think meh. Alyss didn’t thrill me. Hatter Madigan was flat. Dodge Anders was one dimensional. The writing seemed to rely a lot on “the character thinks this but the reality is this”. I just found myself not caring. Nothing about Alyss made her that special to me. She was supposed to have a great imagination and it comes back at the most convenient times. However meh. I didn’t care about her. If anything I cared more about the chessmen. The Cat didn’t seem real and Redd was a very boilerplate antagonist. There asked seemed to be sections where Bedford would just say this happened but not really show it. Blah. Meh.