it's often simply a matter of some books not being released or at least not widely available in a given country. Wurts has gotten some attention in Belgium and the Netherlands because of her cooperation with the wildly popular Feist - my library has her Cycles of Fire trilogy besides obviously the Empire trilogy. But even so, I can't remember ever seeing any book of this series in any bookstore or library in here. I read part of the first book while in the US at some point, where the libraries, at least the good ones, have dozens if not hundreds of SF&F books and series that simply aren't available here in Belgium.

What the reasons are why a series like this doesn't get any attention in here, and others do, who can say... one might suppose that only the bestselling and most popular series get sold on smaller markets like Belgium's, but that's not true either - currently there seems to be a fantasy hype and all kinds of junk that I've never heard of and that's never been discussed on this board, which says at least something about its lack of notability, gets sold in local bookstores (plus some German fantasy that might be big in Germany for all I know, but not in the Anglo-Saxon world if it's been translated at all).

I guess I kind of went off-topic a little there... I'm afraid I can't add much to the discussion of the books, though, having not even finished the first book - I would've, I liked it well enough, but I probably had to go back to Europe or something, I don't remember now.