The old stuff was able to move quickly because there wasn’t much substance to its events, while newer fantasy novels are often more thoughtful but parcel out their ideas more slowly. Blacktongue Thief is best of both worlds.

Every time I read something that’s rich with ideas throughout its whole run makes me wonder why every fantasy novel doesn’t just do that.

A good contrast would be just about anything by Guy Gavriel Kay, who also structures his novels as sequences of dense, rich scenes, but in stories that don’t pull the reader along with any cliffhanging devices. It’s more congruent, and I think more satisfying.

I think it might be the pacing. Having the plot be a high-speed chase but the narration of the chase spare no details or digressions felt dissonant.

This is kinda why ASOIAF doesn’t lose me even when it gets a bit bloated in the later books. On top of the great writing, George RR Martin just never runs out of new details in his world to share with you.

I feel like the essence of a good book series is retaining what’s good in the previous iterations while giving the reader something new to be excited about. Most series struggle with that second part, but Muir takes a very fearless approach and errs more towards making each book different.