I managed to pick up book 2 in a series of 5. Never mind. I don’t know if I missed anything essential from the first book - characters did seem to appear without much in the way of background or introduction but that might just have been the way it was written. I wasn’t hopelessly at sea.

I liked the book but felt it was too much of one episode in a series and didn’t stand very clearly by itself. It also seemed a bit disjointed at times.

Not really sure whether to go on and read book 3, or to go back and read book 1. But I’ll probably read one or the other.