Brent Weeks' The Way of Shadows is the first book in the Night Angel Trilogy, and it's a masterclass in grimdark assassin fantasy. Azoth is a guild rat — a street orphan surviving in the brutal warrens of Cenaria's underworld. His only hope of escaping this life is to apprentice himself to Durzo Blint, the city's most legendary wetboy (an assassin so skilled he's practically supernatural). The novel explores themes of identity, sacrifice, and the moral cost of violence through a coming-of-age story set in one of fantasy's most vividly realized criminal underworlds. The magic system of the Talent is inventive, the action sequences are breathtaking, and the character development is surprisingly tender for a book with this much blood.