Excellent series debut and while a partly introductory book, there are a lot of goodies, a great ending at a perfect stopping point and potential for this to become of my top series of all time.

I will add more as the release date gets closer and of course I will add the full FBC review later in the year but for now if you want a reasonable comparison, i would say that this reads like a much better Way of Kings without all the unnecessary verbiage that was such a drag there - traditional fantasy but with no cliches and with enough "newness" not to be fully predictable, great characters and set-up.

My take from the full FBC review done with Robert Thompson and available on FBC:

While previously I have enjoyed some of Daniel Abraham's short fiction, I am not a fan of The Long Price Quartet, so I had a mixed feeling about The Dragon’s Path - an extremely tempting premise, but what if the author's style just does not match my taste at novel length?

Happily, I really loved The Dragon’s Path and the book quickly vaulted to my ongoing Top 25 2011 novels list and so far it is the only new fantasy series to do so.

The Dragon’s Path is traditional fantasy as best as it gets for me : nothing that we have not seen before as content goes, but pitch perfect execution, vivid characters that we get to know and love during the course of the book and ones we are eager to spend more time with, beautiful writing, action, intrigue and well thought world building with great expansion potential.

The book is also tightly written so despite its almost 600 pages, it does not feel long and I strongly regretted when I turned the last page - the review copy I got has the traditional Orbit "goodies" from the finished product including an interview with the author and an extract from the next book and I just lapped that up and was really sad that I won't get to read the next installment for a while.

The structure of the novel is discussed above with four main threads following Cithrin, Marcus Wester, Geder Palliako and Dawson Kalliam, while several other characters play important roles too, most notably Dawson' wife Clara, the master showman Kit who leads a performing troupe that will have its destiny intertwined with our heroes and Marcus' sidekick, his Tralgu faithful companion Yardem Hane, but the cast of the novel is large and varied as befits an epic.

The younger heroes, Geder and Cithrin who are set to be the main drivers of the action - however unwittingly - combine both expected traits: destined, try and achieve hard things despite the odds against them, with some unusual ones:

Geder is not in that great physical shape to start with, he is both the "nerd" and the lowest ranking noble of his small circle and the butt of the jokes for both reasons, not to speak of his secret interest in "speculative fiction" that sparks derision from his peers and superiors, but which of course will prove important as the story progresses.

Growing up as the ward of an important banker, Cithrin is manipulative and in love with numbers and with finance, so she is determined to have her own trading house which again is not quite what usual fantasy heroines who tend to be princesses or magicians desire...

Of the older heroes, Marcus is probably the most stock - the silent strong type with a tragic past, a cynical but generally accurate view of life and who finds himself doing the "right thing" despite all. While in The Dragon’s Path, Marcus is outshined by Cithrin and Geder, I expect him to play an increasingly important role as the series goes on.

Dawson on the other hand is an unapologetic ultra-conservative noble with clear ideas about his well deserved importance in life, ready to commit what is essentially treason to further his class' interests against the upstart "new men" who compete for the king's influence by among other things daring to promote the interests of the common people... And the author' skill is such that what in other books would be the quintessential villain who opposes progress, turns out here to be an interesting character who also fights the "good fight" in his own way, however ideologically wrong it reads for us modern readers from a democratic age.

The Dragon’s Path world building discussed above by Robert at greater length is actually very good in my opinion - sure it is not yet spelled out in full detail, but there is enough to give a clear impression of what's what and to achieve a sense of the big picture, while of course leaving a lot of scope for expansion in latter installments. To me this is ideal since one of the things I dislike about fantasy series is predictability and conversely one of the things I appreciate the most is finding out new unsuspected things about the universe in cause and here we just scratch its surface, so this is another reason the next book is such a huge asap.

Overall The Dragon’s Path (A++) is a first superb installment in a series that has established itself already in my top level of current ongoing fantasy series and moreover one I easily see becoming one of my top-top if the promise implied here continues to be fulfilled.