Hmmm people talk about this like it's the best book ever written, and I think it's rather overrated; it's pretty underedited (lots of odd grammar/uncorrected quotation mark placement moments, and I feel like a strong editor would had advised not using italics for so much of the dialogue) and the pacing is off, especially for a book that while technically standalone seems very much like setup for a series the author ultimately decided not to continue. However, the main characters here had a lot of depth and were well-written, and the magic/action sequences were great. This really starts to rip around the halfway point.