Rob,
Did you get a chance to read Precious Dragon? You mentioned the first two books and as you noted in the review, The Shadow Pavilion is Book #4.
I wonder if getting through Precious Dragon would help, but then I think I remember you didn't like The Demon and the City as much as Snake Agent (whereas I think I liked it more)
I'm very curious about "Caine Black Knife" because I saw that it's already piling up praises 
Joe: I didn't read the third Chen novel. I liked both of the first two books in the series. I don't know if I missed anything from book #3, but I also felt the plot of TSP was a bit of a rehash of book#2.
DW: Have you read HEROES DIE and BLADE OF TYSHALLE? Either way, CBK is a great novel.
As mentioned before Caine's Black Knife is my top fantasy of 2008 too. It is Caine pared down to essentials so while I missed sometimes the extensiveness of the first 2, this one is almost perfect in pacing, tone, non-stop action...
As top genre novel, Anathem is unbeatable for me this year - but that one just tickles too much of why I still find sf the most interesting form of literature today
An interesting choice I was thinking about was between Caine Black Knife, Hamilton Temporal Void which is 70% superb urban epic fantasy and Weber By Schism Rent Asunder which is 95% traditional epic fantasy with an AI as wizard - for second position in my fav 08 genre novel.
I guess I would tie those 3 since I cannot say which I loved more.
I haven't read any of the other novels you mentioned. At least not yet. I suspect I'll be getting Hamilton's from Del Rey relatively soon.
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