Powerful, character-driven, and dark.
Throughout the book, there's a powerful sense of impending tragedy, which is a neat trick in a volume that opens with a dead, mutilated child, but the characters and sharp prose kept me edging back to read just a little bit more. Matar has crafted a compelling fantasy world that is believably dark: many of the terrible things may be rooted in the fantasy setting, but what makes them truly terrible is how believably human the worst parts of it are. Amid that, she has drawn compelling romance, class struggles, haunted pasts, police drama, political intrigue and more.

This book is a character-driven novel, rather than plot-driven. There are twists and turns of external struggle, and those are cleverly realized, but the central arc of the novel is not those external events, but rather the personal evolution of the primary protagonist. That's an important point to understand, I think, because the novel is framed around that character's personal progression, rather than his external struggles. The external plot essentially ends on a cliffhanger, which is a little jarring if you approach the story as a sequence of worldly happenings. I would have preferred the external story to have included a little bit more of a denouement, but it's hard to fault the first book in a series for leaving me wanting more.

The character work here is truly exceptional. Any of the central cast, and quite a few of the passersby, seem like they could easily step into the role of protagonist, but their time on stage is carefully managed so that none ever quite outshine the lead.