Ugh. Seriously bad. Y'know, there's supposed to be at least one person who's interesting and nice and able to be identified with! Not in here. The hero is self-centered, lazy, and a know-it-all (by his own admission and actions). Everyone who has a speaking part has secrets - the prior, the sacristan, the...I forget what the librarian is called, the...I also forget the term for the treasurer. The abbess, the nun. The woman who works at the monastery. The hermit - both of them. Sheesh! Most of them are obsessed with sex (they're monks and nuns, sworn to chastity, most of them. The author apparently decided this meant they'd be thinking about sex all the time - either wishing for it or condemning that wish in others...). The ones who aren't obsessed with sex are obsessed with money or power or both. The least harmful of the lot is also an obsequious rabbit who's totally unlikeable. There are also two completely unrelated mysteries going on - in one of which the constable and Falconer's sort-of-girlfriend (who's married) are hell-bent on solving the mystery so that they can show off to Falconer that they're as smart as he is, with not even a passing thought about the dead girl. Who turns out to be - surprise surprise - obsessed with sex and her own pride. Sheesh. Another point - while I can't point to anything specific, the tone of people's thoughts about religion/magic/science (and the relationship between the three) rings entirely wrong for the time. I'd say two people were driven mad by the prism...one showed it more, that's all. Cloud-ships and evil eyes. And lots of glints in those 'cold' eyes...of laughter, of 'joy' (huh? at that point...relief, maybe, but joy?), etc. And a heck of a lot of conversations reported rather than expressed in dialog, in awkward and silly-sounding ways. And...just bad. I did slog all the way through it, but I won't be looking for more, that's for sure. Though I'm tempted to find the first one, just to see if it started out just as bad.... Oh, and at the end - the epilogue consists of 'the rest of their lives' for all the characters. So I know how the constable will die, for instance (but not until 'he was involved in many more mysteries...' . Does the author put that at the end of each book? Sheeeeeeeesh. ( )