The Way Of Shadows

This post originally published August 23, 2010.

Author: Brent Weeks
Published: 2007
Publisher: Orbit
Series: The Night Angel Trilogy #1
645 pages (mass market paperback)
 
I was in the mood for something fantasy-ish and plucked this book off the library bookshelf without knowing anything about the story or author (or realizing that it’s a series). All I knew was that it was a story about assassins, based on the cover art, and I thought I could really go for an assassin-story (I also feel like pointing out that the Spanish book cover is a hundred times cooler; it’s a shame I can’t read a lick of Spanish).

I was correct — it was a story about assassins. The story starts with our main character, eleven year old Azoth scavenging for loose change under a tavern. Azoth lives in what I envisioned to be a slum-like area, called the Warrens, and he is on the lowest rung of the social ladder. He is a part of the Black Dragon guild and must pay his guild dues every week to the guild Fist (the guy who beats up anybody who doesn’t have money to pay), Rat, who is vile and trying to become the new guild leader. Azoth also has to pay his friend Doll Girl’s share because she is only eight, mute and doesn’t know how to find money. His other friend, Jarl, wants to help Azoth rise out of the guild, out of the slums, and one day, gives Azoth a sack of money he’s been secretly saving for years, telling him to become Durzo Blint’s apprentice. Durzo Blint is the city’s most skilled assassin, or ‘wetboy’, and an idol of Azoth’s (and there aren’t many people to idolize in Azoth’s world). He is a man that can walk through the Warrens casually and nobody would dare try to mug him. After much stalking, begging and a round of brutal initiation, Blint reluctantly takes Azoth in as his apprentice.

But wait! There is more to this story than a simple tale of an poor orphan rising to become a skilled assassin over years. Azoth (now twenty) forsakes his past and becomes Kyler Stern, a poor noble by day but an assassin-in-training by night (well, I’m sure he practices during the day too, but you get the idea). But his friendship with the noble Logan slowly begins to stand in the way of some of his ‘jobs’ — or maybe his ‘jobs’ are standing in the way of his friendship. Not to mention the fact that his master Blint is actually trying to use Azoth to find a power magical artifact and will not hesitate to kill Azoth if need be. Oh, and also a prophet appears and tells Azoth that he’s soon to be mixed up in some heavy politics and possibly war, which is avoidable if he kills his master. And above all this, Azoth is reunited with Doll Girl, now Elene, from his past, whom he has been in love with ever since, but as an assassin, he cannot love or it will be his weakness.

As you can tell, there’s a LOT of plot packed into these six hundred pages. I was really engrossed in the story in the beginning half, even though I didn’t really understand some of the terms like Sa’kage and Shinga at first (although as you continue reading, it sort of all starts to come together). The last half I didn’t feel as interested in, although I don’t want anyone to misunderstand and think I didn’t like it. I did, I just didn’t feel as if the last half was as interesting as the first. A lot of funky coincidences and twists that I feel the author planned too hard for occur and the story lost a bit of the charm it had. It also got kind of too cheesy, what with the whole “love is a weakness” and “know the difference between mercy, vengeance and justice” and various other one-line assassin philosophies. Maybe cheesy isn’t the right word, but it was driven into my head over and over again, I was a little tired of it …

But overall, it was alright. I really do like fantasy with magic and complicated plots and I feel this book satisfied me quite well in those departments. Complicated enough that the story world felt immense and vast, but not too much that I got confused. I can’t say I liked it enough that I want to read books two and three, unfortunately. There are a lot of loose ends in book one that I’d like to find out what happens in the next books, but I’m afraid I wasn’t that captivated by the story.

Last but not least, I actually really liked reading the acknowledgements in the back of the book. He wrote it in such a way that you get a nice picture of the author’s personality and how much work and effort he poured into the novel. It was fun reading it!

My Rating: 3/5