Anyway, it's about a legendary assassin taking on an apprentice against the backdrop of a city struggling against an invading empire marked by cruelty and nihilism. Obviously, to those who have read Brent Weeks Night Angel books, that'll sound familiar, but it's a different beast. There's little magic, for starters, the whole tone of the story is more serious, and he has a 'no-one is safe' attitude that would make GRRM proud. There's also a difference in that the assassins aren't politically or personally motivated- basically, they're a sort of hands-off protection by having clients wear a seal that tells the world that if they die, the order will pursue vendetta against them, whatever the cost, until they die.
It's got an interesting way of pacing. He's got the main plot of the book, and that's quite a narrow focus, but he also takes time to set out wider implications for the series he's building. This means that the pacing feels deliberate, especially for a book that's quite slim by genre standards at 400 pages long, but never slow. I should note that the blurb (front flap, not back cover) covers nearly half the book, and while it's quite a reasonable one- it'd be difficult to entice the reader while saying less, and it didn't impact the enjoyment for me, although the results of certain events are obvious in advance because of it- I know that might bother some people, so don't read it if it could.
Anyway, Buchanan is a dab hand with an action scene- this is the sword and dagger type of assassination, and he's very good at it- knows how to build tension, and has built an interesting world- he manages, in a mostly magic-less world, to make guns and swords and airships in the same setting feel eminently plausible, and there's a detail to the worldbuilding that gives it life - his real strength, I think, is in character. He doesn't have to spend long with a person for us to get to know them, and he manages to give even what could have been a histerically cartoonish villain a bit of depth.
Long story short; assassins, vendetta, airships, fighting, twists, brutality, characters, swordfighting... fun. It's the third debut I've read this year (NK Jemisin and Paul Hoffman being the other two) and it's the best one by a fair bit. Highly recommended.
This post has been edited by polishgenius: 06 March 2010 - 10:31 AM