So, with the grain of salt that most epic fantasy or fairy tale or sword and sorcery that I enjoy automatically gets four stars, I really enjoyed this book. For obvious reasons, it didn't read like a "Look how much research *I* did!" but like a very well-realized fantasy world. The action was well-paced, the book moved along, the plot was nice and twisted.
The characters were both the high point and low point of the book. Ahmed did a fairly dangerous thing by relying on an older character to carry the action and refusing to let his people slip into well-worn paths. But for all that the choices were innovative and the breaks and acknowledgements of Sword & Sorcery tradition were well-placed, I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed. I was mostly whelmed; they were good enough to carry the story, interesting enough to keep me reading, but they felt...thin. Not simple; they were complex characters, but I never felt as though I got to know them. I felt like I was always one step removed, that I could believe these characters were as deep and complex and fascinating as Ahmed wrote them, but that I was taking the author's word for it, rather than believing it myself. I'm not sure if I can put my finger on it any better than that. Some writers can write characters who truly come alive and seem to transcend their novels. And I really wanted Ahmed to be one of them, because of how good the story is. But, in the end, his characters still felt like words on a page.