I bounced off The Green Bone Saga due to not liking organised crime stories, and it having next to no girls in the first book, but this ended up working better for the most part.

It's about a secondary world central-Asian-like empire where the king has a corps of men and women who fly giant raptors in order to control predators like lions, wolves and manticores. I loved the world building, especially that the birds were flown like a falcon or eagle, not ridden on, the general logistics around keeping a predator of that scale, and most of all how very, very much not pets they were. This is not a book about your talking bird friend, or your bird friend who gives a shit about you most of the time. The descriptions of the fantasy creatures were fantastic, and the manticores genuinely scary.

The character stuff worked less well for me. I liked the main character, and felt like she was grounded and sympathetic, but didn't feel like any of the friendships she had were that interesting, and Lee was leaning way too hard on "If only we'd known then..." and her editor should've made her stop. The tragic flaws lead to tragedy storyline didn't really stick for me, though the ending of the novella as a whole was excellent. Interested to see what Lee does next