Not my favorite Hobb book, nor my favorite series from her. Not a standalone, so start with book one if you like the blurb and sample. 
 A significant theme of this fantasy coming of age story is honor and keeping one's oath to one's king. An essential part of my problem with the book is that I simply think that the hero was asked for his oath to young and then he feels compelled to do things that I find bad choices. I hope that Nuremberg settled for my generation that the defense of "I followed orders" is not sufficient.