The perfect killer has no friends. Only targets.
For Durzo Blint, assassination is an art. And he is the city’s most accomplished artist, his talents required from alleyway to courtly boudoir.
For Azoth, survival is precarious. Something you never take for granted. As a guild rat, he’s grown up in the slums, and learned the hard way to judge people quickly - and to take risks. Risks like apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint.
But to be accepted, Azoth must turn his back on his old life and embrace a new identity and name. As Kylar Stern, he must learn to navigate the assassins’ world of dangerous politics and strange magics - and cultivate a flair for death.
I wasn’t quite sure how well this one fit the Progression Fantasy mould. For Azoth’s plotline, 100%. We follow the boy from street urchin, his adoption by the famous assassin Durzo Blint, his learning of magic and the bond with his ka’kari, his learning of assassination, spycraft, and more. Then we see how this all plays into the fate of the world as we know it.
There are other plotlines that are similar. His friend Logan, we follow. The romance plot line with Elene, less so. This is a great coming-of-age story with great characters and fantastic action scenes. I wasn’t a big fan of how the romantic elements with Elene were treated (nor the weird triangle put into it with the female assassin), nor some of Kylar’s stupidity or ignorance. Secondary plotlines in other countries (aka Khalidor and trying to break into the forest) I really liked, because they provided a great counterpoint to the main plot and introduced other systems of magic.
So if you’re a fan of classical “zero to hero” fantasy series, like Magician, the Belgariad, or various others that fit the mould, and want a slightly more PF bend to them, you’ll probably enjoy this. It’s not as mature as Weeks’ other series (Lightbringer), but it doesn’t end with awful deus ex machina, so that’s nice.
