You know that old joke about “why wasn’t anybody poor in their “past lives”?” How in our past lives, we were all Cleopatras and Queen Elizabeth’s and nobody was “the servant girl”. (Speaking to the females in the audience, obviously.) I often feel that way about fantasty novels, they are always taking place in the world one would WANT to be in, where your special magical talents bring you into interaction with the best crowds, the higher bits of “society” and generally, of course, fighting against evils/evil magics.
This book, on the other hand, is set firmly in the lower dregs. The world of “guild rats”, i.e., abandoned homeless “ghetto” children and, for Azoth/Kylar, the way out is to become an assassin, a “wet boy”, sometimes using those evil magics the heros of your typical fantasy are usually working against. There will be of course times when the “bad assassin” will turn out to be working on the side of the morally good, but for the most part, the focuses of this book are on the other side of things, in the back alleys, in the prostitution houses, on the outskirts. “Under the stairs”, so to speak.
It’s violent, brutal and cutthroat. And very engaging.