Trial by Fire

One of my favorite genre books in a long time. Such an interesting world, magic system, political structure. It's not particularly literary, focusing more on characters, dialog, and plot than on evocation or atmosphere, and honestly a bunch of its pieces are standard fare for YA with a female protagonist (I don't know if the author considers this YA but it shares some traits regardless: outcast, “broken” girl is suddenly very important, torn between two boys, etc). Yet it still does a really great job fleshing out this world. I'm really looking forward to the next one.