In all honesty I thought it was okay. Not the best thing I've read, nor the worst. I couldn't quite shake the similarities between it and Tales of Earthsea (there are several). Not that I think there was any lifting or anything like that, it's just that I felt I'd already gone down that road before. It's not the book's fault, but that did lessen my enjoyment a bit. I did like the structure of it, the way it was a story in a story., and how it moved around a lot, not getting stuck on the same things chapter after chapter. After a while though I started to loose interest in the main character because... I dunno really. Maybe it was just there there was so much of just him and not a lot of side characters who I wanted to be fleshed out more.
I guess in the end I'd say it's a good book, but not exactly my kind of book. Worth reading once.