NeoLibrarium

ISBN: 978-0-316-0337-7

Durzo Blint considers his job to be an art form, but he has never entertained the notion of taking on an apprentice to carry on his work - mainly because killing people for money results in a rather lonely life.

Azoth grew up in the streets, stealing and scraping for money to pay his guild dues and looking for the one break that would keep him - and his friends - safe. The main threat to that safety was one person. Rat. Rat is a strong-arm for the guild and he seems to have it in for Azoth and his friends, to the point that torture and beatings may seem more kind than anything else he might do. The threat is ever-present.

Azoth knows of Durzo Blint and has encountered him twice. Each time he is awed by one thing: Durzo Blint fears nothing. The feeling is foreign and miraculous to Azoth, who has lived his life in the shadow of fear. He wants to be Blint’s apprentice and he wants to be able to protect his friends. Surely a career as a wetboy - an asssassin capable of using Talent (magic) to do his work - would let him live a life free of fear and make him finally capable of keeping safe the only two people in the world that have ever really mattered to him.

But can you be a professional killer and still have room in your heart and mind for love, nobility, or basic goodness? How can you take a life and not be tainted by it? How can you take many lives and not become evil?

Azoth must not only learn to be a wetboy, but he must assume a new name, leave behind every semblance of the life he knew in the Warrens of the city and aquaint himelf with the world of politics and intrigue. It is a rather dangerous game, given that the king is a childish tyrant and the nation is more in the hands of the organized hierarchy of the criminal classes than it is under the rule of a benevolent monarch. There are also threats beyond his country’s own borders - having to do with ancient magical constructs; the ka’kari - and Azoth may be the only one who can save, or destroy, the chances of his own country’s survival.

All in all, a great read, comparable in quality and originality to Gail Z. Martin, Terry Goodkind, and other such names in the genre. The Way of Shadows is the first of a trilogy and is one of the most skillfully written stories I have read in a great while  - with more complexity and details than I can shake a stick at - unless I want to write a lengthy essay about it.

If, readers, you enjoy fantasy in any way, shape, form, or fashion then this is a book for you. Go find it, go read it, then come back and tell us what you thought of it. Personally, I give it a ten.