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The Way of the Shadow

by Brent Weeks

 

Reviewed by Ruby


Azoth is a guild rat, a homeless boy of eleven living in the slums under the thumb of Rat, the guild leader. When Rat threatens to destroy him and his friends, Azoth flees and becomes an apprentice to Durzo Blint, a master wetboy. At that moment Azoth dies and Kylar Stern is born. He is thrust into the noble world full of politics and backstabbing, assassins and magic, where no one can be trusted, not even Blint himself.

The beginning of the book is pretty interesting, if a little long. Understandable, since not just anybody can become the apprentice to the best wetboy in the world and Azoth had to earn it, but I still felt it dragged a little. Then when the political side of it started to emerge and more characters were brought in, it got a bit more interesting and then I’m not too sure what happened. I don’t know if it was me or the book, but there were suddenly too many characters to keep track of. There was too much politics, none of which made much sense, but that might have been me not caring enough to make sense of it all.

I had to practically force myself to finish this book. By the end of it I was skimming the pages and there were even more characters being thrown in that I stopped even trying to keep track of them. None of the characters, including the main ones were all that interesting or relatable and I could care less if they lived or died. Their decision making also left me confused and bewildered at times. Nothing really flowed or was incredibly entertaining. Overall the book was just sort of blah.

Grade: D


Coral's Review

I agree with Ruby that this book started off interesting – if a little slow. It had promised as it moved into the middle section of the book and then I just seemed to stop caring, reading more out of stubbornness than a real desire to find out what happened at the end.

When you start a book you know that you’re not supposed to know everything about a character and that more will be revealed as you read. I guess that as I read I hoped I would find something in either Blint or Azoth that I would connect with. I never did. Blint was awful, to everyone. I really didn’t care if he lived or died and sometimes wished he would die.

So much time was spent on Blint and Azoth that I felt the political side of things got pushed into the background. I would have liked to spend more time on what felt like it could have been a more interesting plot, with an outside empire scheming to take control of Blint and Azoth’s country. Sometimes the story lines felt too disconnected and didn’t really work in the same book.

There were some twists at the end that I wasn’t expecting, but at that point I didn’t really care anymore.

Grade: D