This book is one of my favorites in the entire Valdemar series. I love any story that drags me into the point that I feel like I am living it, smelling the smells, seeing the sights. This book was that book for me.
Skif is a unique character in the Valdemar series, one of the few in which a character didn’t necessarily live a life of perfection prior to being Chosen. In Skif’s case, his less-than-savory life was one forced upon him through circumstance and necessity, rather than one he would have otherwise fallen into.
He lived a life of abject poverty and abuse, living most of his childhood in the slums of Haven. He finally escaped the abuse of his uncle, quickly falling into a gang of thieves. Thieves they may have been, but they were the closest thing he’d ever had to a family, and life with them was a vast improvement over the life he’d been forced to live with his uncle. Most of this book actually takes place before he meets his Companion, which is a different format than most of the books in the saga, and I actually really enjoyed that. It gives the reader a chance to really get to know the main character in a deeper way. I think this is a big part of why I loved this book so much!
As I said, much of this book takes place in the slums of the capital city, and that is a unique setting for a fantasy setting, in my experience. So much emphasis is put on the more developed aspects of a fantasy world, that we rarely see much of the other side of that. So that was an interesting perspective. It was a nice change from fantasy worlds that focus on the nobility, or those comparable to the nobility.