I was really disappointed with this book because I could see that it had great potential, and the author had a good writing style and was an awesome world-builder. However, I just couldn't get past the ridiculous gender issues that this book does not manage to deal with. I was completely horrified with the plan to raise this child as a boy and then magically reveal her as a girl later in life. No one seemed to care how much that would upset the kid and cause gender dysphoria -- there's more concern about the father's best friend not knowing than there is about the kid. Once we hit the big reveal, the child was shocked and horrified, but the author immediately started using female pronouns. There may be some resolution of this problem in the other two books in this trilogy, but there's so much fail in this one that I won't be reading those. Interesting concept, terrible execution.