Shadow's Edge

Executive Summary: I have mixed feelings about this book. It's very uneven. I went from 3 stars to 4 stars, back to 3.

Audio book: Paul Boehmer again does a good job reading. A few accents, but nothing special. My only real gripe is when the POV suddenly shifts. I'm not sure if it's the way Mr. Weeks wrote the book, the way Mr. Boehmer is reading the book, or the way the audio was cut, but there needs to be some kind of pause between POV shifts in the same chapter, because it is VERY jarring when it happens.

Full Review
So I'm apparently in the minority of my goodreads friends who all seemed to like this book a lot more than I did.

It started slow, and I mostly got over it. I was all ready to give it a 4 stars for recovering nicely and BAM! The ending happened. Terrible. I kind of understand why he did it that way, because I was wondering what was going to be the driving force for the final book, but still.

If you've read the book you can read me rant about what I didn't like in these spoiler tags:

First he teases us with the Empire Strikes Back ending "KYLAR I AM YOUR FATHER" which annoyed me, but then it was "just kidding". Only he may as well not have been. Kylar loses his arm just like Luke and it's Vi, not Kylar whose the God King's offspring. Close enough. And dumb. Also unnecessary if you ask me. He simply could have been too powerful for the compulsion to have been completely broken on her without needed to add the rule that "compulsion only works on family". I would have believed that.I get that Kylar needed to die, and make his deal to come back immediately when we get the note from Durzo saying "DON'T MAKE DEALS", but the whole thing just felt badly executed to me.

Now that that's out of the way. Overall this book is very uneven. I really hate the “Badass whose giving up on fighting” trope. And this one just felt like it went on too long. We all know he can't stay hidden and never kill again, so can't you just get on with it?

Even when he does finally get on with it, the book tends to meander too much. I'd find myself listening to sections and just wanting to get back to the main story.

This sounds like a mostly negative review, but there are things to like. I enjoy his characters. I think Vi makes for a mostly interesting addition as a POV character. She is part of the meandering in places I was referring too though.

Logan's development is probably the most interesting, and at times the most disturbing. His time in “Hell's Asshole” still makes me cringe.

This book seems heavily influenced by the Wheel of Time. First we have the Aes Sedai wandering around and we meet the Brown who is more focused on her scholarship than anything else.

Then the Children of Light show up (I can't remember their actual name, or find it on the damn wiki), with their roving army of Mage Haters. They even have a similar emblem.

Overall this is an OK book that very enjoyable in parts and not so much in others. It's a bit of letdown after the first book though.

I absolutely loved this book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Brent Weeks is an extremely talented author in the gothic/dark genre of fantasy. The main character in this book goes through so many harsh turns and yet still remains in a way innocent and good. Kylar is certainly now one of my favorite characters. Every time I would pick this book up it would be hard to put down.

The Way of Shadows ???????????????Shadow's Edge ???????????????

Did that seriously only take me six days? It felt like an eternity.

Firstly, I finished The Way of Shadows and adored it. This whole series is a re-read for me: I originally read this series around 7-10 years ago. I tanned the whole trilogy quickly and I was far too young to properly understand and appreciate the plot. Upon re-reading, I gave the first book a five star rating and was really disappointed by this book. In fact, when speaking to my dad about the series (he had read it around the same time I originally I did), he remembered loving the first and being disappointed by the second. He told me he never bothered with the third.

The second book is so disappointing because of how much of a departure it is from the first. The first follows Kylar as he grows from young orphan boy to a master assassin. The plot is complex, the book is fast paced and the relationships are rich. I found the dynamic between Kylar and Durzo to be one of my favourite parts of the first book and I did miss it in the second. But more importantly, Kylar seems to regress from the first to the second book. In the first book he is focused and calculating, even outside of battle. For the first third of the second book he is completely adsorbed by his relationship with Elene. It makes him a completely unlikeable incel (involuntary celibate), and the majority of his thoughts about Elene complain about how they haven't had sex yet as she wants to wait for marriage.

It brings me on to another point that other reviewers have made, more eloquently than me. All of the women in this novel are piss poor caricatures of women. A whore who fell in unrequited love, a deadly assassin who uses her body for her work because she can feel no love, a prudish virgin, a woman forced to whoring and rejected by her family. It disappoints me because I enjoyed Momma K in the first book, and I was astounded at how boring and predictable Vi's plotline turned out to be in the second book.

For the first 90% of the book, the pacing is too slow and it felt like running through soup to get through the book. The last 10% flew by too fast, and held a large portion of the action. I have heard that Brent Weeks' second series shows a large improvement from this one, so my hope still remains strong. I am going to continue on and finish this trilogy to see how the bombs dropped at the end of this book detonate.

When I began this middle book in the trilogy I wasn't exactly drawn to the developing story. Our hero, Kylar, tries to renounce his job of master assassin – wetboy – to live a normal life with Elene, the scarred woman he's known since childhood. Of course you know things like that can't last but it takes a little while to start to turn. Meanwhile the Godking, Garoth Ursuul continues his evil ways as usurper to the kingdom of Cenaria. But then, as Kylar gets his mojo back, the story really kicks into gear and the pages fly by. Past the halfway point I was fully invested not only in Kylar's trajectory but several other supporting characters. This was an excellent middle book. I'm going straight to the final book to see what happens next.