A solid entry into the series that I thoroughly enjoyed. I'll be picking up the third book based on the strength of this one. 
 I'll be very interested to see what happens in the third book, as our main character, who is driven primarily by angst, has, in theory, cured all of his angst by the end of this one. His motivations are changed. 
 I'm mainly curious to see if the author will actually follow through on this and stop saying things like "But the king told me to..." and "If only my wife hadn't been brutally killed...". Exciting times :D 
 The plot meandered a bit, but I enjoyed the characters so no biggie. Also, the group of assassins. That bit just got weird, and I'm not quite sure what the intention behind it was. It almost felt a bit like the author wrote himself into a corner and then got funky to get out of it. Props to him though, because he really stuck with it. I just didn't much care for it. 
 One note of genuine critique would be Kest, the super duper swordsman of the group. He was, straight up, a different character than in the first book. I suspect that the author had a better sense of what he wanted the characters to be in his head for this book, and so just went for it, but the character in his head wasn't the character he wrote in the first book. 
 I've done a terrible job of saying why this book is GOOD, but I gave it 4 stars, so just go and read it. It's the three musketeers if the three musketeers had magic. That's all you need to know. And, this book was, in hindsight, a better rounded book than the first in the series.