Excellent, atypical fantasy, set in the equivalent of the Age of Enlightenment, with solid characterisation, awesomely twisted political scheming, detailed world-building and elegant prose. ( )

Fantasy set in a parallel world’s Age of Discovery/Enlightenment. Lots of court intrigue and naval battles. A little too long, and too much intrigue. Hopefully the sequel will get to the plot ( )

The book was good, but it was very clear that this was just the first half of the very large story, so it was obviously not a story in itself. Russell tried very hard to give this book its own rise in action and climax, and once we finally got to it, it was at least intriguing. And it did make me eager to get to the second book right away. There was the feeling of "Now the story is *really* getting interesting."

It wasn't that the story in this volume wasn't interesting -- it just took a long time for everything to develop. But the characters were well drawn, and it wasn't hard to adopt favourites pretty quickly. I loved the main character, Tristam, even while I felt that we were actually too much outside, observing him, rather than being right there in his head with him. I also quite liked his cousin, Jaimas, and wished that we could see more of him, but Tristam was so very much the centre of things that I was sorry we didn't. (I got my wish in the second book, though...)

I was uneasy about Tristam occasionally, though, because so often there seemed to be evidence that certain characters were using him or had ulterior motives -- yet he continued to trust them. There didn't seem to be any rationale for it, and I felt like he wasn't behaving like a real person. So even though I liked him, I wasn't entirely satisfied with how he was portrayed.

The thing that was greatest about the book, to me, was the court intrigue. That was really, REALLY well done, and I frequently laughed in delight, thinking to myself, "I don't know whose side anybody is on!" In fact, I wasn't even sure how many sides there were, in the first place. I thought that was probably very much like a royal court in this sort of society.

I did enjoy the book, but I sometimes wondered, with both this and the next one (which was far more gripping) whether they could have been written with half or 2/3 the length. ( )