It's got a great plot, great characters and great world-building. The feminism, queerness and anti-racism bring waves of refreshment.

The main thing that let it down for me was the language. The voice I heard was not that of a 1912 steampunk denizen of Cairo. It sounded more like a 21st century internet-soaked American. This included bad grammar: subject pronouns that should have been objects, adjectives that should have been adverbs. Decolonisation is one of the themes, but American English is re-colonising much of the world. It might not bother you, but it definitely bothers me.

Clark also draws on the tradition of the detective genre, which I don't enjoy. Again, it's such an American form, so it added to the annoyance of the language.

I'm a bit sensitive to this because of my recent reading of Lord Dunsany and Ursula le Guin's comments on the importance of style in fantasy. It probably won't bother most readers. This is perhaps a reflection of the sinking standards of readers and writers in the internet age.