Both Sides of the Blade

I really enjoyed the creative world-building, the unique take on traditional high fantasy races, the slight mix of magic and technology, and the writing style, which was very lush and descriptive. Personally I wasn’t a fan of the continuous descriptors of all the women characters chest and physical attributes - I’d rather their descriptions focus more on other aspects. I also found there was a lot of tell, not show. Rather than being told about the world and races and people, I prefer when books have you experience it through a character. These descriptions also often interrupted the action, which felt jarring. There were a lot of times that the perspective changed from one character to the next with no break or chapter change and I found that hard to follow at times, having to stop to figure out who I was following from one paragraph to the next. While I think those detractors prevented me from loving the book, I still overall enjoyed it and am really intrigued by the world and characters. It is very epic in scope and imaginative. Certainly a very good first book.