I quite enjoyed reading this book. The protagonist Shara and her companion Sigrud are mysterious and interesting. I especially liked the world building with the island nation of Saypur and the Continent (does it only remind me of Japan and China?). Saypur is apparently a high-tech nation with electricity and gunpowder while the Continent was formerly rich in magic but is not anymore and is therefore crumbling. The book starts out with a murder mystery, turns into a spy-thriller and finally it becomes a somewhat epic fantasy. The pacing is good, although sometimes I felt like the plot is doing too much and towards the end, it feels like the author just wanted to get the story finished.

There are several information dumps or long conversations simply explaining what is/was going on.

The book is written in present tense which felt a bit weird in the beginning.

But besides the somewhat clumsy info dumps there is only one thing I'd like to critique and that is how the story jumps from we're fighting against some human conspirators to the the appearance and killing of gods. Also Olvos came out of the blue - it was hinted at that she was still alive, but suddenly she's Shara's great grandma ... So -1 star for that.