Synopsis: Young Azoth is a street urchin in an unstable gang looking for a way out. Routinely beaten and shamed, he worms his way in as an apprentice to a legendary assassin as his ticket out. Or so he thinks. A widely hailed fantasy with magic, murder and uber-powerful enemies.

My take: Pretty exhausting piece of work. Dark tones, morally challenged characters, tough-to-take scenes, relentless pacing, and more literary feints and twists and turns and betrayals and crosses and double crosses than any book I've ever read.

In other words ... great fun!

A nit to pick: There are probably a dozen to two dozen nonsensical sentences in this book ... sentences obviously missing a word. That doesn't send me into a rage like it does some readers and it certainly didn't stop me from reading, but it makes you wonder how closely this book was edited.