Launching into another epic series, TALON OF THE SILVER HAWK marks the beginning of Raymond E. Feist's latest Midkemia series, Conclave of Shadows. Other Midekemia series include the Serpentwar series, and the Krondor books. Before going to far into this review, you should be warned that this reviewer has not read these other series.

TALON OF THE SILVER HAWK relates the story of a young man named...er...Talon of the Silver Hawk...who is the sole survivor of the slaughter of his tribe by the forces of evil. Rescued by a secret society of good, the Conclave of Shadows, he is trained to serve as a spy and given the opportunity to avenge his people. The focus of the book is Talon, which helps a lot if you aren't familiar with the other Midkemia books - the established characters and stories serve as a backdrop to the main storyline.

Feist's writing is quite sparse. His descriptions are minimal and leave much to the imagination of the reader. His focus is to tell a story, not to write intricate prose. It makes for an entertaining read, but it almost goes by too fast. Some elements of the story feel undeveloped, abandoned for the sake of progressing the plot. Huge swathes of time are jumped over so that Feist can get onto the next interesting bit of the story. For such a potentially dark story of genocide and revenge, it doesn't bog down in the internal psychology of the main character. This makes a nice change of pace after some of the more dense pscho-drama fantasy novels out there (Wurts, Jordan, etc.).

In short, Talon is an interesting yarn set in an established fantasy world. It's a light read, a great escape that doesn't take itself too seriously.