The Tower at the Edge of the World

What if the kid in the Omelas hole were a wild mage of incredible power and figured out how to free himself? It's a nice premise for a quick read and very sympathetically written. A young man discovering himself and his capabilities in the world.

It'd be an unremarkable pleasant story except this also is the first of Goddard's Nine Worlds stories and a precursor to the excellent The Hands of the Emperor. Reading this early backstory for a major character from those books is quite a surprise and it's funny how in her later books she calls back to so many details written here.

I wouldn't read this story first; I'd read it after the three recent major novels. But it's a nice backfill for some story and character.