Steve Wilkerson's Reviews > The Shapeshifter's Lair

In my opinion, it's not one of the better books in the Sister Fidelma series. I didn't find the mystery engaging; the exposition of the mystery was tedious with too many seemingly unrelated complications, not all of which were tied together at the end. Tremayne uses dialogue, interviews, and ratiocination to solve the mysteries, a technique I really like; however, because the settings are in ancient Ireland with uncommon personal and place names and center on a legal system unlike any we're familiar with, the dialogue can be formal, stiff, and even convoluted. As a rule, Tremayne's complex dialogue flows pretty smoothly, but I found this more convoluted and stiffer, even at times awkward, than usual. I often had to reread sentences to grasp their meaning, and there were too many textual errors, presumably the consequence of poor editing.