Master of Sorrows

This is a good book, written by a good writer, but with flaws in the world building.The characters, the action, the “magic” system are very well developed, but the setting and world building seem to be very hit and miss. The lore and epochal battle between good and evil seems well thought out, and I liked the idea of a society that considers blasphemous being maimed or scarred. However the reasons for the whole existence of the “village” is not really clear, and its relevance also seems to be very dubious (from the inside it looks like a place that needs to exist for world order to remain, from the outside it's seen as a bunch of ninja goat herders). It feels a bit as though some element were added to provide some plot devices:- The village is entirely devoted to recovering magical artefacts because this way we can have retrieval missions and we can justify why there are so many gadgets to play with.- The ninjas are seen in the highest regard because they recover magical artefacts, so that we can have a reason for the main character to want to become one, also ninja academy- The women ninjas are mysterious and powerful so.... can't really find a reason for it, besides adding some colour (which works) and fleshing out a bit the love interest side of the story.Maybe things will be coming together better later in the saga, but for the time being we're left with a world that has many very cool aspects but no overall explanation why that is.The story is good, and the book is very enjoyable as long as you don't mind having to accept on faith that there are reasons things are as they are.I'll be interested in seeing how things progress in the sequel, I hope that as we shift from the Ender'sGame HarryPotter part of the saga to a more Wheel of Timesque one the world won't have to carry around leftover lore it collected to make for an entertaining Book 1.