Police procedural in gang-ridden city, with the maverick cop sneered at by lazy clannish long-timers, and Da Chief in control. Cliche? Cliche. But the Maradaine books with the Thorn are top fun, and this manages the same trick. There are also little crossovers with the Veranix books here; the Brotherhood of the Nine seem to be a thing, and Kalas mentioned failing "The Nine" in Thorn. Do I spy some kind of underlying plot thingy? I believe I do.

Every reviewer has mentioned that Vee is basically Batman, and they're not wrong. (The cover in particular embraces the comparison.) He is pretty hyper-able; having a circus background ought not to mean that you can take on two or three professional assassins in a fight and win, magic or not. But the book is rollocking good fun; it deftly avoids the march towards grim and gritty fantasy, in return for what's actually clearly a well-worked-out world, and some insight into how street gangs work. 

More fun in Maradaine. Same vibe as the previous book in this series; Veranix is still basically fantasy Batman (although maybe Robin is a better comparison), and there are lots of fights salted with lots of interesting world stuff. Maradaine is one of the few fantasy cities that I can actually imagine living in, along with Camorr in the Locke Lamora books (I wonder if Scott Lynch, with upcoming The Thorn of Emberlain, was annoyed at the naming of The Thorn of Dentonhill?) Also, there is clearly a whole bunch of stuff about the world that people don't know, to do with interactions between science and magic; ignoring all the big picture stuff that Phadre and Jiarna are clearly going to work on, there's a bit where a wound is completely healed by putting yellow powder and copper in it. This seems like an alarmingly important invention; I assume quite a lot more will be made of this alchemical science-plus-magic mix in future books.