The Way of Shadows

I enjoyed the storytelling and characters but not enough to continue the series.

Light and fun heroic fantasy with an edge, highly recommend for fans of David Gemmel or Joe Abercrombie.

Well. I did like most of it but it kind of lost me in the last part. I don't know if I will read the next book in the series. I wanted (view spoiler)[Blint to live. I felt like he was as much a part of this book as Azoth was. I did not care for Doll face at all. I didn't connect with her. I liked the friendships that Azoth had. Everything could have almost ended so happily for everyone, but since the book is a little on the dark side, it could not. (hide spoiler)]. I did like the time I spent reading it. It did not seem that long at all. Perhaps things may be better clarified in the next book, but I don't know if I can deal with that many pages of despair. It's not as emotionally exhausting as the Game of Thrones series (I could only make it through the first book in the series... don't get attached) and not nearly as brutal as the The Lies of Locke Lamora (that book scarred me for life). So far, I liked the Kingkiller Chronicle Patrick Rothfuss Collection 3 Books Box Set -GiftBox best.

I made it 91 pages and then I quit reading. I found this incredibly difficult to get into for a number of reasons. For one, the world building is incredibly hard to understand and picture. They throw out a bunch of terms about the type of buildings, but those terms mean little when you have no meaningful visual references to them. Mostly they seemed to borrow from more "exotic" real world cultures, becoming caricatures of those cultures, and yet all of the heroes seemed to be white males - save maybe one, who they indicated might be a person of color. The descriptors for the people and the countries were increasingly vague. Maybe I would have understood more once Azoth got out into the world more, but I'm not sure that I cared enough about any of the characters to worry about it. There were five main character from whom you get to see the world in this book, at least as far as I read. All of them were men. They were all fairly similar in personality, save the little lord who seemed to be kind of sweet. I didn't particularly latch onto any of them because, again, they seemed like caricatures. It was kind of like reading a D&D campaign where you can tell they have an idea of what their character is like but it isn't fully fleshed out when they started writing. And let's talk about the fact that Rat, the villain in the first 90 pages, is the only person with interest in more than one gender. And the way that the author chooses to express this interest? Sexual assault. I'm sorry, but when all the other characters are conceivably straight and you make only your villain bisexual, it reads like you think non-straight people are pedophiles and rapists. That may not have been the author's intention, but that's how it came across to me. The writing style is also not particularly interesting. It's not bad, but it isn't good either. There's no descriptive flair, nothing happens that isn't entirely predictable. It's just... blah. Obviously, I didn't finish this book. It was 650 pages and at 91 pages, I found I just wasn't interested in forcing myself through the remaining pages. This book came recommended to me by a college friend (I'm sorry Mike!), but I can't pass that recommendation down I'm sorry to say. If you're reading this review and considering reading this book, just keep walking. There are better books.

Interested me enough that I'm going to continue the series but I hope it gets better; I'm not feeling attached to any of the characters and sometimes the writing is disjointed. I hope in the next book the magic starts to show more consistencies--none of it made much sense in conjunction with each other, and I didn't even realize magic was involved in this universe until a quarter of the way through the book--and it's a long book. I only started getting actually pulled into the story and reading faster about halfway through.

This book was so bad I couldn't even finish it. I have been trying to push myself through it for over a month (I am usually a fast reader, most books take me less than a week). I feel absolutely no attachment to the characters and every time something happens my response is kind of "ok...why should I care?" It is so simply written that there is just no challenge whatsoever. I have about a hundred pages left and have finally made the decision to put it down forever because I am just getting no enjoyment at all from reading it.

As someone who absolutely adores fantasy and assassin-themed books, 'The Way of Shadows' ticked all of the things I love about these genres. The characters were interesting, the plot was immersive, and the action scenes were genuinely exciting.

5.71 on on CAWPILE

I'm being generous in giving this a three star rating, mainly because the beginning of the story was actually rather good. Unfortunately, that doesn't last long. This story plays on every Fantasy trope out there. It spends too much time on graphic death scenes, and not nearly enough time on actual world building. It treats women like weak minded pawns, whose sole purpose is to either die violently or be love interests, to advance the plot. Or what little plot there is. I love Fantasy. Nothing makes me happier than to get lost in a new world, with new rules, and hopefully with some magic. I need guidance though. The author needs to care as much about their world and the characters as I do. Weeks didn't make me feel like he was invested. So I never felt invested. Things moved along quickly enough that I finished this, but just barely. So three stars for a strong start and an okay finish. I don't think I'll be moving on to the other books in this series.