I got this book in the goodreads give away.
I enjoyed it but there was some things I liked and some things I didn't like as is in all books.

First I'd like to say that I've read a few of Philippa's previous books and found then very solid reads about strong women who live in a time where strong women were looked down on and punished. The dynamics she brings to her books is always fascinating.

With that said this book of hers is the genre I usually read. I like to read things about magic and don't usually read about historical fiction. I've read a lot of books about magic so I'm going to critique this book from that angle and not the historical fiction one.

First I'd like to say that I missed the first person reading in this book. I craved to get into the main characters head but I denied. I also didn't like the hopping around from main character to main character. I like the author to stick to their guns and stick to one character like a bur. At one point I was following one main character for forever when all I wanted to do was see what the other main character was doing the whole time. This could be personal preference but I felt it disturbed the flow of the story.

The climax of the story was really weird. The main characters solved the main ordeal that brought them together halfway through the book which left me thinking "Now what are they going to do? They already defeated the bad guy". So the story meandered on with the two of them traveling together to come across another town with another problem. This problem didn't seem that important where the stakes for the main characters weren't that high. Instead the author chose to developed the main characters two best friends making them dynamic and interesting. Which actually made them more dynamic and interesting than the two main characters! I was wondering why the story was even about these two lame people who can't even help themselves when their servants where twenty times more in depth and interesting. The two main characters were left to fall flat because they didn't grow at all in the second half of the book. Instead these secondary characters did in a situation that didn't feel like a climax to the story at all. The ending of the story actually felt like it meandered out.

With that said I didn't hate the book. Not by a long shot. The author is still a good writer who can create interest in the story. I just felt a little awkward reading it as it was like reading two different books, with two storylines, and two different sets of main characters.
The plot and storyline were interesting and have great potential for the next book. I would read the second book of this series in a second. The first book just felt like a little slow start up book that lead up to the real meat of the story.