Can't quite decide between three and four stars for this one, so I'm erring on the side of generosity. The world setting is intriguing; a religious dictatorship of some sort where the use of magic has the potential to let literal demons enter the world, so The Order (some sort of holy police force) patrol the lands to ensure all magic use is eliminated - and along the way they clearly allow plenty of corruption and abuse of power too, as you'd expect in such a force. The head on dealing with essentially police corruption and brutality was an unexpected choice too. To fight the magic and the demons, we have tinkered mech suits that turn the wearer into unstoppable armored warriors. These suits are built by tinkerers and forbidden to any except the Emperor himself. So yes, overall a very interesting world and setting, and the action is nonstop, keeping you reading all the way to the end.

Now the down side; the main character, Heloise, is REALLY annoying. She's supposedly 16 but acts about 6; almost every bad thing that happens in the book is her fault, and it's hard to believe that a girl growing up in such a harsh would could possibly be such an undisciplined brat. A 16 year old spoiled American kid in that situation? Sure, might act like that. But someone who's grown up in that world and that environment, or with any type of serious discipline as a child? No. So, it's REALLY hard to fully enjoy a book with a main character I want to slap most of the time. The ending also felt a bit abrupt, and as mentioned, was hard to enjoy because all of it was Heloise's fault in the first place.

So... if you like the idea of medieval type fighters in steampunk-ish mech suits; if you like LGBT and ACAB themes; and if you can managed to deal with a heroine who should have been smacked to within an inch of her life after the first time she put her entire family's life at risk, then pick this one up I guess? Clearly there are or will be sequels, I'm a bit on the fence about whether I'll pick them up though because if they're also told from Heloise's point of view I may have to strangle someone.