However, I was pretty annoyed at the end. I’m not even a huge fan of murder mysteries, but I was so happy that something finally happened and it was finally time for our characters to solve the mystery that I found the rest of the story more interesting.
There isn’t actually a “Murder in LaMut” until (putting the % in a spoiler tag for people who don’t want to know) 74% into the book! Since the title proclaims there’s a “Murder in LaMut”, it wasn’t a surprise and felt very anti-climatic when it finally happened. They assign three mercenaries to guard him, and those are the characters we follow for most of the book. We start off learning about a character who seems to have had a set of unlucky accidents, and some people think they might be more than just a coincidence. I often enjoy having my expectations thrown off and being surprised, but that didn’t do anything for me this time. I therefore expected the murder to happen or to be discovered near the beginning of the book and I expected the rest of the book to involve piecing together clues and/or dealing with the aftermath. The title of the book implied to me that this would be a murder mystery, or something similar. I didn’t dislike them, but there wasn’t anything about them that grabbed me. Had I been invested in the characters, I wouldn’t have minded if the story was light on action or events, but I didn’t care for the characters either. There just isn’t much going on for most of the book, at least not that interested me. I’m hoping this was the low point of the larger Riftwar Cycle series, because I found it pretty boring. The co-author of this book is Joel Rosenberg, whose books I’ve never tried. Murder in LaMut is the second book in the Legends of the Riftwar subseries, a trilogy of books co-written with different authors and set during Feist’s original Magician. If I wanted good fantasy with a careful and slow progression of characterization and depth of story, then I really needed to look no further. If I wanted nothing but Feist, I might be disappointed. There is no big magic, big battles, demon invasions, or recognizable characters. This is almost nothing like the other Feist novels. Or readers may have wanted something more LIKE the other Feist novels. It just might not have been packaged right.
You might say that this is the beginning of a great Mystery series that just happens to be set in a fantasy world.
Being a mercenary and keen on keeping one's skin really can be a job for someone bright and analytical, and I definitely saw a lot of that throughout the novel. The murder mystery DOES make sense, however. I'd read a LOT more of these guys if I ever get the chance.
It is, however, a pretty damn delightful novel full of great details, very well developed characters, and a slow burn that reminds me of an enormously entertaining backstory for a series yet to come. Much later on, it DOES become a murder mystery, but the title is misleading, masquerading as big plot point without ACTUALLY being the reason for the novel. It's almost a three musketeer's kind of tale without the humor, a close band of mercenaries working their way across Feist's world until they get trapped by circumstance and some nasty Baronial politics and a snowstorm.