Despite the cliff-hanger ending, this book is strong enough to be read on its own. The search for the Eye of Hazimel is a good mystery and ends up in some pretty momentous developments for the CLAN NOVEL series. There is also a lot of fascinating interplay and intrigue between characters, compelling enough to hold your attention even if you don't know anything about what's happened in the other books. The story is told as a flashback and a small flaw is that to get everyone to where they need to be in the situation depicted at the start of the book, some alliances seem to shift very abruptly. It's not enough to detract from the overall story, however. The book also takes us all the way to Calcutta- pretty interesting in itself.

Like GANGREL, the book also has a good focus on the title clan (something which was missing from TOREADOR which spent a lot of time using a Toreador-sponsored party to depict Camarilla Elysium politics and from TZIMISCE which was more about the Sabbat generally.) With all its intrigues, this story a good depiction of how the Setites conduct their business (the strongest lies subtly incorporate as much of the truth as possible) and use their powers. It's also a good depiction of a character following a Path of Enlightenment (who degenerates if he does something for purely selfless reasons). It's interesting that, although Hesha can't be called "good" in human terms, he doesn't seem to be exactly evil, either. I ended up both really liking him and wondering if I should.


Devious plot line, it will fascinate and hold your attention   November 22, 1999
 5 out of 9 found this review helpful

Seriously, I believe this series gets better and better. This book is marvelous compared to the previous ones. Tzimicie perhaps was the best I read so far but Setite won over it. I believe the story is probably a theme that explains the background of the eye, somewhat.