I've started with the books of Mr. Feist in 1991 with the "Magician", when the rift war saga wasn't even termed as such and it was nice to see this saga picking up the pieces from the very beginning.
For a Feist fan, like me, it is a natural must read....for someone just starting out on Feist should start, especially for this three book series, with the rift war books or is, otherwise, missing to many of the references.
The strengths are Feist typical a very strong story telling. There is no other author in who's books I can immerse myself like this and who can pull me along like him. Also, he manages to keep the parallel story threads very tight, and I think that Feist has gotten better at that over time (and even in the very first magician it is already really strong). In most other books, I tend to prefer one thread over the others, but in this they are very even in tension building and the transition works very well, even though I find the usage of the same theme to transition from one thread to the next a bit to forced. But that feeling lasts for half a page at most.
Another strength of Feist is his character development, but here my critique starts: In the first two books of the series it starts out strong as usual, but then the characters are abandoned in favor of the main character of the universe of Midkemia. Also there are too many loose threads which have not been tighten. It struck me as if Feist wanted to round up the entire story that he started with the Magician and decided in the last third of the last book of the series, to keep some options open and by that creates inconsistencies which are uncharacteristic for him.
Attention - spoiler alert:
The hole point of the Quor remains unexplained, in the third book of the rift war saga, Tomas mentions while battling a dreadmaster that the Valeru have beaten the Dreadlords, why Tomas is not involved in the battle against the dreadlord in the second realm is not clear. In the education of Pug as a magician "the enemy" is explained as the host of the Valeru, and here it seems, as if the enemey was rather the dreadlord who upset the balance between the realms. Also, so far, one could assume that the chaos war raged between the valeru and the gods, but now it seems as if the dread were somehow also part of it. In a book that brings conclusion to so many things I would have wished for a more consistent answer to many questions. The worst goof is probably that the nighthawks (which are supposed to serve the Nameless One) recognize Varen only as the first among them but Bek as representation of their worshiped god, even though Varen carries a spark of the Nameless One and Bek "only" a spark of the God of Battle of the Dasati. Here Feist seems to have decided again in the last third of the last book of the series to take the story in a different direction, which is somewhat disappointing.