Excellent fantasy – very 90s, and I devoured it in a single Saturday. Teenage boy with no family gets helped out of prison by a mysterious stranger who accepts him as apprentice. Said stranger turns out to be a jack-of-all trades spy, a charming and capable rogue. They encounter harship and intrigue and find friends and blah blah, classic fantasy story arc in the end.

Just as with the previous book in the series, I enjoyed the world and the storytelling a lot, but some relationship-related things clouded my enjoyment.

Avoiding second-book syndrome, Stalking Darkness is at least as good as Luck in the Shadows – but it also touches on some serious yikes. I have thoughts.

This is where I stop reading the Nightrunner series. The protagonists are kidnapped after a lengthy exposition part. The kidnappers are, well, how do I put this? From a country where rich men keep harems and slaves, and where the masters have darker skin and curly beards. That's not even fantasy racism, it's just regular racism. Evil arabs seem to have been acceptable way longer than most other lazy racist stereotypes.