The beginning of the story moved too quickly, giving little character detail. This made the horrors of a raid on the village seem like a faceless story. Much like a news clipping of one we know nothing of, so the emotions are not as likely to be there. The characters became more colorful once they were on a mission, then the book became hard to put down. The depth of many of the characters was very interesting from this point, specially some of the lesser ones. I could have done without the pirate captain stereotype. Still there were some new and interesting characters, mainly the "rogue and trickster" types. They were interesting and had new angles to their personalities, not borrowing from past stories, or movies, etc.