I liked a lot of the ideas in this book. The overall story of the Greatcoats was exciting and I kept wanting to learn more. Monster was novel and very fun to read about. The secret sword fighting "language" was ^beautifully* conveyed and caught me completely off guard. The flashback plot with the king was highly enjoyable. Falcio himself has a lot of good things going for him and I liked being in his head. And as you said, the plays on honor and duty was nice.

However....the dialogue....My god. Some of it was frighteningly bad. Borderline unreadable for me. There's no way I'm buying that these characters are actually speaking that way. It seemed so unnatural. He also has a bad habit of over explaining eveeeeeerything. Like "hey see what happened there? Huh? Huh?"

But, that still didn't stop me from liking it....

.....until the ending. He completely lost me at the ending. I hated it. I hated every word of the last 4 or so chapters. Every potential cliche and deus ex machina he had in his hand, he played them. I was so hoping it wouldn't go in every direction it eventually did. So disappointing.

Essentially, despite all that cool stuff it had, I will not be continuing this series. IMO, it's flaws greatly outweigh it's strengths.