Review: Good plot; needed more world-building
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 9, 2013
I enjoyed the characters in this book and the plot was full of twists and turns which should have been revelatory and amazing, but there was a lack of description - of the world, the spaces the characters moved through - that made this book much flatter than it could have been.  I just couldn't get a sense of this world.  There was a reference, at one point, to a bedside clock, but no reference anywhere to guns or other machinery that would have been a contemporary to a clock.  There were Game of Thrones references ("Winterveil" for "Winterfell" etc) and a lot of talk of swords and castles that would have placed this in a medieval fantasy environment, but then strange references to waistcoats (and clocks) that seemed more aligned with a 19th century asthetic.  The book couldn't seem to figure out where it was. There were references to sirens and ifrits and dragons (how many mythologies could one book borrow from?) but nothing was developed enough to make this a good read.I give this 3 stars because the plot and characters were engaging, but given the complete lack of attention and thought to world building, this probably, actually, deserves more of a 2...