This was a wonderful book. I found it extremely imaginative, it gave me the impression that inventing small side stories and fleshing-out details came very easily to the author, and it's all very enjoyable to read. The scale of the story is large, ambitious, and convincing, while at the same time, essentially a fairy tale.

My only complaint is exactly that: at times, the book was too much of a fairy tale. The magicians' powers seem immense in one field and very limited in another. This caused me to lose faith in any notion of measure for a magician's power. A magician can move whole cities, why can't they just win a war with a single word? Why can't they just assassinate someone in France? I'm not saying there should be specific rules, that would be silly and gamey, and I would still complain. But here, magic was totally random.

Other than that, the book is marvellously beautiful in every aspect.