Shroud of Eternity by Terry Goodkind (Sister of Darkness: The Nicci Chronicles #2) 5/10

     To start this off when this book was still pretty new there was a bit of drama with the author of the book calling the cover art to his own book laughably bad. This sparked a lot of negative debate merely on the grounds that the author himself was being a dick. To me, that's not enough to say that it's actually bad, but I can see why it turned so many people off and this book isn't without its sins.
     It's got characters that grow about as much as they did in the last book (not a lot.) The thing that really helped the last book its fast pacing where the characters go from place to place isn't present in these books. We more go to a single city and say there the entire time. The fact that there's not much happening through a large chunk of the book doesn't do it any favors. The chunk of the story is just showing different ways of how perverse the city is.
     One thing that tends to happen in fantasy is that characters become way too powerful for their own good. There becomes no conflict because the characters can just burn all their problems away with the flick of the wrist (Because Magic!) 
     Even with these near-fatal flaws the book still has some interesting magic, and along with it some decent fight scenes. I can see why people got annoyed with Goodkind. The cover art is actually better than the book.