The Bloodletter's Daughter sets the stage with a mad prince and a (not so) simple maid. It has everything you could want in an historical fairy tale, the prince, the maid, a forbidding castle and a situation fraught with all sorts of dangers, both moral and physical. The first several chapters live up to the premise with the introduction of several interesting characters and the plot that moves forward at a brisk pace. Unfortunately somewhere around half-way the book looses its way. The characters behave, well, out of character, the smart one does stupid things, the slightly sinister one does benevolent things, strange scenes that appear to have no bearing on the plot show up and then are never mentioned again, and in general the story square dances around until its hard to keep track of what is going on and who is important to the plot.
I find that I am always more disappointed with a book that starts out strong and really grabs my imagination and then fails to live up to its early promise I always feel the need to find that early promise again when I should just put it down.

The language of this book is evocative and the setting and characterizations felt authentic but I found the character development slow and the narrative difficult to follow. Dividing the story telling between different narrators is not an unusual literary tool, but in this instance the transitions derailed the progress of the story and made it difficult for me to follow the narrative and develope any affinity for the characters.
I really wanted to like this book but in the end I could not get past the mechanics of the telling to just enjoy the story.