A solid read. Effective escapism, with good intrigue, and excellent descriptions of assassins doing their assassing. My only real issue with this book is the predictability of the characters, they all seem to get wound up and set on an ethical path, and you are just waiting for the inevitable moral block to be placed in front of them so they will spin off the direction you know they must. By about a third of the way through the book I was dreading bad things happening to the main character because I knew it would lead to another breathless Morrissey-esque How Could This Be fest on his part. That said, he is in that period a young adult coming to terms with his life, and I'm sure I was at least as whiny, and I wasn't raised as a guild rat in a horrible slum with an assassin as my only father figure, so I give some leeway. 
 The best summary of my feelings on this book is that I picked it up on a whim based largely on the cover art, I got about what I anticipated, and I went back and am reading book 2 in the series now.