So, I liked this book a lot. Jeff Salyards is a good story teller and the book leads you on easily - it's never a chore & that's an achievement right there. Most novels have dull spots, Scourge went down smooth and swift. 
 It's a book with plenty of violence, small scale frays take up a fair portion of the narrative - people aren't simply cut down and forgotten, the combats are detailed and protracted, there are no supermen here. 
 Scourge of the Betrayer's really novel aspect happens to be one that I encountered for the first time in the book I read immediately before it. The tale is told in the first person but that person isn't the hero of the piece or a key protagonist. Salyards takes it a step further and has the view point be a scribe whose job is to observe and not get involved. 
 The main protagonist - the person whose eyes we'd sit behind in a traditional treatment, is Captain Braylar Killcoin, wielder of the enchanted weapon, leader of his troop, the most able man on the team and charged with a complex mission. 
 The book feels very much a part one, which is OK since part 2 - Veil of the Deserters is approaching rapidly. Our scribe doesn't know what's going on at the start of the book and 75% of the way through that's still largely true. This is something the use of a non-central point of view affords us - we are allowed to keep learning the Captain's plans rather than having them dumped in our lap at the start. Moreover the scribe gives us another filter on events - he isn't used to violence, he doesn't necessarily approve of the mission, he is learning the dynamics of this established team... and, despite orders, he does get to act from time to time. 
 At the end matters are far from resolved ... we're not even that sure which way we want them resolved, but it feels as though we've reached a fit resting point as our scribe finally has the big picture (or so it seems). 
 I can't tell you what aspect of the book I liked most - I think that it's a work that's more than the sum of its parts. Those parts are good on their own and, acting together, make a very readable book that has me interested to see where book 2 takes the story. 
 EDIT: I've now finished the third book and it was really good. Gave it 5*. 
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