I love this series, and it is even better because the author researched his family history to create this series. While each book is slightly repetitive, they are certainly entertaining. I love the incorporation of midwifery and hangman - it's like birth and death side by side.

While this wasn't my favorite from The Hangman's Daughter series, I still relatively enjoyed it...at some parts. It does seem to ramble, and I began to lose interest, putting it down for a week, and then later remembering I should probably try to finish the book. This kept happening so it was a little hard to get to the ending. When I finally braved through to the end, I was glad I did, however, because it was a nice little wrap-up. However, there were too many "dun dun duns." For example, "so and so was actually a part of so and so's clan" and "so and so was watching you the entire time" and "so and so knew about this all along!" Ugh. I get tired of that when it's all crammed together. I still love Oliver Potzsch's writing, however--my favorite line was, "His knees buckled and he sank to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut." Or what about when he compares a character's beaten, tortured hands to "swollen...pig bladders." We learn a lot more about Magdalena and Kuisl's relationship in this book, which I was grateful for, but they never actually interact except for maybe a chapter, which was disappointing. I wish the book had been a bit shorter with a little minimization on the "who-dun-it" as well as more interaction between Magdalena and her father. But other than that, I did enjoy the book, and I will read the next one.