I was prejudiced against this from the start. I was under the delusion that I’d already read a Mcguire novel and not liked it, and so had to overcome that artificial (and inaccurate) feeling.

Needless to say that didn’t take long. I’ve never embraced steampunk or alchemical works as a group, yet there was something linguistically which really appealed here. The language was mesmeric, and even if the alchemy as a building-block hasn’t always done it for me, I found the combonation of characterisation and world just right. It was a story I rarely wanted to leave.

Without doubt one of the best fantasy works I have read in a long, long time.