I failed out of this book a little less than 1/3 of the way through. None of the characters managed to seem real to me; the author jumped back into the main character's past and had to tell me how old she was each time, but she seemed no more mature at sixteen than she did at eight.

The main villain seemed like he answered a call from central casting and got the part because he had an especially villainous beard; I assume the beard is also his motivation for villainy. I'm not really sure what the do-gooders motivation is for do-gooderery, since I don't think any of them even have beards.

The entire plot is motivated by people doing the obvious, except that somehow it's not obvious to the characters until someone points it out. Sometimes this is lampshaded by Katsa being canonically bad at people.

I liked parts of the setup, with some people having special mutant abilities, (here called 'graces' and the mutants called "gracelings") but I couldn't identify with any of the characters enough to care, and gave up on the book when I realized I'd rather do a load of laundry.