The Way of Shadows Book Review

THE WAY OF SHADOWS BOOK REVIEW

For Durzo Blint, assassination is an art. And he is the city's most accomoplished artist, his talents required from alleyway to courtly boudoir.
For Azoth, survival is precarious. Something you never take for granted. As a guild rat, he's grown up in the slums, and learned the hard way to judge people quickly – and to take risks. Risks like apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint.
But to be accepted, Azoth must turn his back on his old life and embrace a new identity and name. As Kylar Stern, he must learn to navigate the assassins' world of dangerous politics and strange magics – and cultivate a flair for death.

For Azoth life in the Warrens, is a life filled with misery and violence. The slums of Cenaria, the Warrens is a place where murder, rape and child abuse is a fact of everyday life, and survival means joining one of the guilds that operate within the city. But one guild member has ambitions to take over and a confrontation causes him to single out Azoth as an example. Afraid for himself and his friends, he decides that the only way to put an end to his fear and protect his friends, is to apprentice himself to Durzo Blint, Cenaria's foremost wetboy (wetboys are magically talented assassins). Yet before his apprenticeship can begin Azoth must make a choice, and realise the cost of hesitation.

The Way of Shadows is an incredibly immersive read, the characters are intriguing, realistic and very human, which is a credit to Weeks considering the proffesions of many of them. Weeks has done a great job fleshing them out, so much so that it feels wrong to refer to some of them as secondary characters. The first book in the Night Angel Trilogy, The Way of Shadows takes place in Cenaria, a city headed by a weak King and ruled by the corrupts Sa Kage and their leader the Shinga(the Cenarian underworld leaders). The story focuses on Azoth as he becomes Kylar, learns what it is to be a wetboy, and is entangled in the future of Cenaria.

Weeks has done a phenomenal job and raised the bar when it comes to debut novels. An intricately written tale, filled with fast paced battles and more betrayals than I can count on my fingers, and the villains are deserving of the title. One thing Weeks is not afraid to do is kill off his characters, which makes for a tense read when you dont know if someone is going to live or die. He also does not gloss over the reality of wetboys and what they do.

The Way of Shadows is a gritty and exhilirating read that I recommend to anyone who enjoys darker fantasy. And I mean dark, murder and rape are some of the ways used to develop the characters, if you're sensitive to descriptive gore and violence you may want to give this book a pass. Due to a marketing move made by Orbit the final two books in the trilogy, Shadows Edge and Beyond the Shadows are already released.
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