This was a very solid fantasy book. As a standalone novel it works very well, it took a little while to get going but once it got there it became a real page turner. Each character was fully developed, and I did manage to get attached to them as the story went on. I liked the explanation of how magic worked in this world, both in the sense it felt believable and the way it was explained was rarely just for the sake of it, instead actually explained via the plot at the time (show don't tell). The plot itself had enough twists to keep me guessing till the end and there were not significant loose ends from what I could tell.
 
 I have a handful of downsides to pull the rating down a bit but nothing major. The romance introduced towards the end felt unnecessary and shoehorned in to give the characters involved a full story without it really ever having developed. There's a section of pure exposition where a mystery from the past is just fully explained which was also a bit forced in there as well. Besides these 2 points, which for many people were probably positives, the book was brilliant.