The first couple of chapters felt sort of clunky to me, filled with some fairly awkward exposition, but the pace and style smoothed out and drew me in. The characters are interesting and engaging and the plot races along. There were times that I wished the book were longer, to give more time to Garet's exploration of the city and to allow relationships to develop. Perhaps because of this, shifts in certain characters occasionally felt too abrupt, so that it was hard to believe that a character at the end of the book was the same one we had met at that beginning. But overall I quite liked it and might be tempted to pick up the sequel.