The first book in a trilogy that appears to be completely standard fantasy adventure fair. It covers all the usual characters - adventuring princess, exiled rogue prince, guard captain, thief, merchant, philsopher, witch, you name it they're in here somewhere. So the band of merry adventurers sets off independantly and amazingly all manage to meet up by the end of the first book having uncovered a threat to the world as they know it, formed uneasy alliances and encountered strange beasties and cryptic prophecy type things. Oh and there's a pet monkey. The opening 1/3 of the book is quite interesting exploring the city and politics, but once they're on the road it's just absolutely standard stuff. The storytelling is rather bizarrely told from 1st person bouncing between 1/2 dozen different characters which is somewhat disjointed and also makes it even more obvious that none of the characters actually have any. They're all bland, slightly sarcastic, self-doubting and pretty confused. For some reason I've started reading the 2nd, I'm not sure why. ( )