Rating: 4 stars

Book 2 of Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy finds Kylar Stern starting a new life: he's slain his master and abandoned the wetboy life and is moving away from Cenaria to start a humble new life as an herbalist with Elene. But leaving behind life as a wetboy may not be as easy as he thinks. There's a lot of enemies looking for him, a lot of criminals in his new city that need thwarting and there's everybody from his old life in Ceneria suffering under the Godking's rule. Jarl is now the acting Shinga (crime lord) of Cenaria, and when he beseeches Kylar's help and is assassinated during his visit, Kylar has no choice but to take on the Godking and attempt to overthrow an empire single-handed.

Things won't be easy though. There's another wetboy looking to finalize a contract on his head, there's hundreds of mages and Vurdmeisters looking to kill him and there's a detachment of troops bringing the insanity-inducing goddess Khali into Cenaria. Logan's still locked up in a prison cell with cannibals and the Godking is allowing construction of demonic monstrosities to turn the tide of his war with Cenaria. It's not going to be easy, it probably not even going to be remotely possible to accomplish, but who ever said the life of a wetboy is easy?

Now this is what I'm talking about. Shadow's Edge picks up right where Way of Shadows left off and the timeframe is much more compacted that the previous novel (several weeks as opposed to a decade), thus allowing a much smoother-paced, easy-flowing novel. Characters with brief introductions in Way of Shadows find much larger roles here, more characters are introduced, and the undercurrent of political unrest in the midst of a war adds a lot of tension to the novel. Weeks has a knack for creating difficult and interesting situations and dropping his characters in the middle of them and the results are very enjoyable. Shadow's Edge was a much quicker read than its predecessor despite the comparable length, due in part to being able to dispense with the formalities of character introduction and getting right into the story.

Fantasy reader, take note: Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy is a brilliant introduction to a new name in the genre. There's plenty of content in these novels to keep you interested and looking for more once you've read them. You can see the George R. R. Martin and Robert Jordan influence in these books but all the while, Weeks manages to maintain a distinct narrative voice. A word of warning though: this is an absolutely incredible debut trilogy; if you pick these books up, be prepared to do nothing else until they're finished.

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Publisher: Orbit
Pub. Date: November 2008
ISBN-13: 9780316033657