As far as fantasy novels go, it's pretty standard fare. I was dismayed by the beginning, and afraid I'd have to trudge through the book - annoyingly clueless kid, frequent infodumps about uninteresting fictional politics, unpronouncable fantasy names, and frustrating genre blindness.

Once the exposition was out of the way and Alec got to be his own character instead of following more knowledgeable characters around the book became far more enjoyable. Nothing groundbreaking, but definitely a fun book with a cast that grew on me.

As for the romance aspect - there's already the power dynamic problem of Alec essentially being a sheltered country boy and Seregil being an experienced spy-thing. Especially at the beginning, there's a constant emphasis on how young Alec is and he's always called a "boy", and it really skeeved me out.

Spoilers, but I think it's important to take into consideration one way or another: Seregil is essentially an elf-esque species: so long living that by his species' standards he's a 'teen' despite being 60 years old.

However, there's no actual romance in this book, and by the end of it they're more or less on equal footing, with Alec becoming a spy-thing himself with a boss and mentor who's not Seregil.

Lastly, in any books, especially m/m, there's a tedency for the cast to be very male-oriented. While the majority of the major characters are men, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of women and their personalities. Instead of just lip service mentioning women being equal like some other books, there are plenty of actual women leaders, soldiers, wizards, scholars, and politicians.