A solid sequel that carries all the strengths of its predecessor and satisfyingly completes a complex tale that successfully incorporates politics, war, polytheistic religion, and family ties... Combining violent and detailed battle scenes and well-plotted sieges with political and religious intrigue, Duncan has done an excellent job of keeping the novel accessible and riveting.
Quill and Quire

As always, Dave Duncan rides his characters hard, but delivers a unique, masterfully built, very colorful fantasy world, with epic - and very gory - action, and an ultimately satisfying ending.
Bookloons

A solid addition to any library's fantasy collection; for fans of fantasy adventure.
Library Journal

Duncan writes with comic subtlety, an awareness of casual cruelty, and a sure knowledge of just how powerful and changeable human emotion can be. His characters are witty and resourceful, wily and intelligent, which makes for highly entertaining reading. Like the best of his earlier novels, and surpassing most of them for emotional depth, Mother of Lies offers the kind of swashbuckling fantasy fans won't want to miss.
Edmonton Journal

Duncan's prose avoids the excessively florid in its description and the archaic in its dialogue, opting instead for simpler narration and contemporary parlance that help to keep the story moving at a brisk pace. This is not paint-by-numbers epic fantasy, but a world as quirky as its impossible shape and as unpredictable as the roll of a twelve-sided die. Mother of Lies...serves as a refreshing reminder that epic fantasy need not always be doorstops filled with manly men speaking in overblown rhetoric and grasping their swords.
SFF World

Fans of Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkin, and David Eddings should give Duncan a look, as he writes similar light fantasy adventure . . . but with greater quality and extra care to the background.
SFRevu.com

[The multitude of viewpoints] doesn't always make for easy reading, but it does help build up that sense of grit and ambiguity until what might have been a gamer's romp or one of fantasy's familiar morality plays feels almost like grim realism.
Locus