I really enjoyed all the characters in this book and the magic and the story and the villain was reasonably scary and everyone's ongoing poor life choices usually made sense in context (as a removed reader who can see all moving pieces, perhaps I have some evaluative distance that the characters do not).
And also I was...uncomfortable with the degree to which revolution as a method of dealing with injustice is not merely critiqued but vilified. Isn't it interesting how there's a city of people desperate enough to die for freedom and yet no villains among the nobility who appear to be withholding it? It's the deeply realized people against *the idea* of aristocracy and Miller takes the side of the aristocracy by consistently seeing them as people. It's a both-sidesism that completely elides the power of the aristocracy to let people die.
The story is very carefully told to be "I believe in change, but not like this".
Which is frustrating because I *liked* it and there's a story in here Miller doesn't tell about how a focus on economic elides the way that gender plays a role in power and oppression and that you cannot build a fairer world on economics alone. Miller almost goes there at the beginning, but then just lets it slide.
Having said all that, the sewing bits in here were exquisite.