Theft of Swords

I originally listened to this on audio, and I highly recommend that as a way to read this book. The reader is phenomenal and lends a lot to the series with his voice. On reading it, I definitely felt a huge appreciation for the amount of details and set-up that Sullivan put into his world building. On the surface, this is a wild, high fantasy romp that makes good use of fantasy tropes. The action is fast-paced, the dialogue is snappy, and the characters are all great to spend time with. It also has great female characters, especially for European-based epic fantasy. I would say that this first book is a lot stronger than the second, but the series is worth continuing to the end to see where all the tiny threads eventually lead.