This is an oddball fantasy set in a sort of pseudo-Victorian-ish setting that might look and sound similar to what a modern author from New York would imagine - which is to say, nothing whatsoever like anything that would actually have been seen or heard in Victorian England. American authors should probably be banned from ever trying to write anything resembling an English accent; the effect here was equivalent to taking the highlights of Dick Van Dyke's attempt at a cockney accent and writing an entire book with it.

That aside, if you can manage to imagine this novel is set on a completely different planet that does not have anything to do with Americans attempting to riff off what they think lower class British accents and class politics might be like in a fantasy-history world ... it's still a very odd book. Silly and fun at times, a fairly quick read, light romance (mostly lesbian), and a not very mysterious murder mystery; it's less about figuring out who's responsible for attempted murder (which doesn't take long) and more about figuring out why and extracting revenge, with a slow-burning romance along the way.

The motivations and reasoning of our group of heroines is rather hard to follow at times - somehow it seems to make perfect sense when in hot pursuit of someone who has just fled town for the entire group to stay put for 4 days working on combat practice and other lessons and completely failing to pursue; and then once it's established that the target of their hunt is a drug addict, somehow the simplest solution is to ... become drug dealers also, with a better product, and infiltrate the manufacturing supply chain? None of which makes the slightest bit of sense really. The main characters (a lower-class fire witch and an upper class half-troll) are at least reasonably likable, though it takes a while for the fire witch to start to develop a bit of character. Their oddball companions include a genteel old lady necromancer, a were-pig, and various wizards and fighters, all women also. Anyway, if you like Victorian-ish fantasy and slow-burn very light lesbian romance with an absolutely awful impression of Victorian-ish settings, class lines, and accents, this book may be for you?