Written by Brent Weeks, The Night Angel Trilogy is a compilation of three heavy 600 pages tomes - The way of Shadows, Shadow’s Edge and Beyond the Shadows.

It follows young Azoth’s life as he becomes an professional assassin (a wetboy) known under the name Kylar Stern.  Magic, evil powers at work and saving the world insues. Oh, and did I mention immortality?

Spoilers start here!

When you first open the book, there’s a map, reminiscient of any fantasy world books. Its typical, hand drawn, simple, yet utterly unclear. I can see the countries involved in the story (which is scarcely limited compared to the amount of countries/places indicated on the map) but the borders are poorly definined, and I really can’t tell how big Ceneria is supposed to be. Small detail, but it really irked the hell out of me. Khalidor looked tiny! compared to Ceneria, which I don’t think it was supposed to be? Anyways, the maps does serve its purpose in setting the countries in accordance to each other.

Story:

In all honesty, I loved the trilogy with all its good and bad. I was so addicted I read throughtout the night without being able to put it down. The story is exciting, fast-paced and filled with actions. The book is not for the faint hearted, though; sex and violence are common occurences in the serie and really add to the spice and realism of the assassin’s life.

Each and every event keeps you holding on to your breath and reading on to find out what happens next. You just can’t stop. It’s that bad. Every plot and twist is nicely brought about and linked together, forging a strong tale. On the other hand, the author is guilty of deus ex machina, though mildly, and also of being a tad predictable, especially with the damsel in distress card, or the HIDDEN POTENTIAL!! card. Or the immortality card. Durzo coming back to life despite losing his immortality? And Elene going miraculously from mute to not was a mistake, in my opinion. What was the point of having her mute from the start? The ending was my only low point in the plot, considering the fact that it was really rushed and ended in an open way. A bit too open; and the author forgot Ulyssandra and Momma K. Uly didn’t attend the funeral, and Durzo forgot to visit Momma K, which really irked me considering he wrote her a message of “I’LL COME BACK FOR YOU”. Not. And Kylar ended up staying immortal afterall, which is a bit disappointing, considering I consider immortality a form of godmodding. Oh and the baby thing? Yeah. As great as it sounds, it was pretty far fetched.

Characters:

The main character, Kylar/Azoth, is a typical hero in my book. Though he lives a life of murder, his moral grounds are unshaken and he feels remorse towards the jobs he does. Read, total emo. Not as much as his master, Durzo, thought. Still, both characters are strong and just, and readers can easily sympathize with them. The author also presents the other side of the assassin world through Hu and Vi, another pair of master-apprentice assassins who, on the other hand, relish on the violence that thier job entails, which evens out the strong sense of justice the main characters carries about. But Kylar was a good character, in the sense that as the hero, he persevered and grew stronger with each and every struggle that came his way. What is there not to like about a guy like that?

As any good hero does, Kylar has a sweetheart. First introduced as Doll Girl, later on named Elene, she is the epitome of perfect goodness incarnated in a desolate world of nothingness and death. Yeah, I didn’t like her much. I didn’t like her the moment I found out her name was Doll Girl. Because really, that’s the only purpose Elene serves throughout the book: she is a doll. She doesn’t do anything except being dragged along by whomever decided to drag her along. Of course, I get that she’s there as Kylar’s only fragment of happiness, or whatever, still doesn’t beat into my head that there’s only three girls in the entire book, and that one of them is a bratty child, the other is the forgotten assassin and this one’s a total ignorant fool who can’t even understand that her entire life was payed with the death of others. That point irked me the most. Hadn’t Kylar taken the job as an assassin and killed so many people, he wouldn’t have been able to send the money for Elene to get out of the slums and live the carefree life that she did. But no, the girl instead yelps on and on about the God and goodness and how Kylar is disgusting for deceiving her. Yeah, right. Not to mention that Elene falls into the enemies hands… well ALL of the time. She has her redeeming points at the end of the series thought, but its not much compared to the amount of fail that she was the rest of the time.

And then there is Logan, Kylar’s best friend and up and coming King of Cenaria. This man, I loved. Logan started of as a naive, rich, and righteneous young man yet became cruelly caught in the threads of fate. Yet despite all of this, Logan faced his own humanity and kept his honor. As unrealistic as it is, it is so damn cool.

Vi was by far my favorite character. It’s a shame she’s always pitted against Elene, and ends up being overshadowed most of the time. Vi represented the femme fatale character, what with ultimate feminie beauty and all, yet I loved her anyways. She had her share of troubles, and faced them all with her chin held high, and she was actually useful! She also ended up being pretty damn strong. It’s not clear wether Kylar ever did end up with her or not, thought it was hinted at it but I had the unrepressible feeling that it was a rebound time of thing :/

Another character I loved was Momma K. Epic, that’s really all I have to say. She had influence, power, and values.

There are many more characters to The Night Angel Trilogy, but my most memorable ones limit themselves to the above. Dorian’s story was exceptionally sad, I found, considering he is probably the character that had the highest influence on Cenaria’s victory, yet ended up crazy and without the love of Jeni.

There was something that kind of had me thinking about the cast, though. I couldn’t help but get the feeling that there’s a hint of racial discrimination (if you can even call it that) or even just plain stereotypical associations with appearances. The most notable one: if you’re blond, you’re pure. Hell, Elene is blond, Logan is blond, and they were both characters with exceptionally high degrees of moral justice and righteousness. I can’t recall if Momma K was blond, though she might be the exception to this. White skin people were obviously the favorite, considering Ceneria and its neighboring peaceful city were inhabited by white people whereas the rest of the world was not. Khalidor people were dark skinned (except Dorian, curiously) despite the fact that their country was up north and filled with snow. The Sethi were dark skinned, and although good, they had their share of savagery. There were even Asians, who ended up being uptight honor people liken to the Japanese during the samourai era, and whose young leading was already guilty of patricide. Oh, and the only black guy mentionned ended up being a prostitute and dead. I don’t know if any of this was intentional or not, but its something that I picked up and thought I should point out.

Overall, though, this trilogy is definitely worth a read. Its one of my favorite books by far.