Forbeck, like many writers in the Eberron series, has his repeated descriptive line. In Keith Baker's City of Towers, the overly repeated event was the protagonist being disarmed. In The Crimson Talisman, Adrian Cole seemed to call every weapon, long or short, a dirk. Forbeck's characters sure seem to spend a great deal of time with their head in their hands, often shaking the head at the same time. But this is really a small complaint.
A good deal of Marked for Death is devoted to establishing, and raising, the stakes for the future volumes in the trilogy. Forbeck does this every well and made this reader hopeful for the series, but slightly dissatisfied with the original. Like the Carson of Venus stories, Forbeck seems too focused on the A narrative and forgets that readers like to have some small resolution at the end of a story. I wanted at least a minor story arc resolved.
Aristotle says that every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Marked for Death is merely a beginning, but it is a good beginning. If you read Marked for Death when it was released, the months spent waiting for the next volume were impatient months. The impatience I feel is sign that Forbeck effectively set the stakes for the reader. But if you're anything like me and find waiting even one week for the continuation of a narrative too long, you might want to wait until the series is finished to start reading them.
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