Picked this up on the recommendation of a friend from work and boy howdy was he right about this one.

It's the first of a trilogy but there seem to be references to other stories with the same character. From what I gather there are short stories that happen before this one, and there's another trilogy later as well. The references didn't leave me lost so much as piqued my interest to go read more.

The main character, Erevis Cale, is a former theif who has sworn himself into the service of Mask, the god of shadows. He has also been faithfully serving for a decade as a butler to a rich family he was originally placed to spy on. Just as he feels his time with them is coming to an end he gets pulled into a plot even darker than the villain himself knows.

This is a fun read with some thinky bits on it as well. It's in the Forgotten Realms setting, and came out around when D&D was in its 3rd Edition, so there's a fun game to be played where you can try to guess the characters' classes, what spells they are casting from the descriptions, etm.

This doesn't distract from the plot, which has plenty of adventure and mystery. The interplay between the main characters is where the book really shines. Cale teams up with Riven, another acolyte of Mask with very different ideas of morality, and Jak who is a former Harper and acts as Cale's very own Jiminy Cricket.

I will say that the book ends on one hell of a cliffhanger and the only saving grace is that this trilogy was completed years ago and you can dive right into the next one.