Beyond the Shadows

Executive Summary: I really wanted to like this book more than I did. Most of my friends seemed to enjoy it, but I just found it a disappointment.Audio book: Paul Boehmer again does a good, but not great job as a reader. He is clear and easy to understand. He does a few voices, but I really have trouble telling some of them apart.Full ReviewI found this book to be a letdown. I felt [b:Shadow's Edge 3754016 Shadow's Edge (Night Angel, #2) Brent Weeks http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327881435s/3754016.jpg 3797880] started going off the rails a bit and to be uneven. This book was worse. There are things to like about it. I still found myself rooting for the main characters. The main plot was interesting. But that's about it.This book suffers from way too many subplots. Many of which didn't add much to the story for me. What started as an action packed gritty fantasy series in [b:The Way of Shadows 3227063 The Way of Shadows (Night Angel, #1) Brent Weeks http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327881551s/3227063.jpg 3261241] has somehow been morphed into a bad soap opera.I think the main story suffered as a result of all these subplots. It felt almost as if Mr. Weeks was considering expanding this from a trilogy into a longer series only to sort of plop all the characters together at the end.I would have liked to see more time on Neph Dada and Khali as the main antagonists of this book, they felt more like background noise.The most interesting character of the series to me was not the protagonist Kylar, but his master Durzo Blint. Now that I've finished the trilogy, I think I would have preferred if the first book was followed by two prequel books about Durzo previous exploits instead.The series did at least end at a good place, wrapping up all of the main threads and many of the minor ones, but by the end I was just happy to get it over with.