I had strong feelings about A Conspiracy of Truths - it's one of those books that I'm not really sure if I liked it but it stuck in my head. Though this one follows a different character, I expected something similarly remarkable. What I got was what appeared to be a manuscript written by Ylfing with commentary by someone else, which was amusing at first but got old really fast. My biggest problem, though, was that even in his own record, Ylfing was obnoxious. I tend to overall have a low tolerance for characters being stupid, and Ylfing is just so, so stupid. He was entertaining as a side character in the first book, but as the main character I just wanted to wring his neck. The only problems in this book are problems of his own creation, and they wouldn't even be problems if Ylfing could just stop whining and be normal about anything for even a single minute. The commentator on his manuscript was pretty much immediately fed up with him, and so was I.