This book was very cute and I clearly read too much T. Kingfisher because I wanted just...a few more severed heads, so to speak. 

I understand the idea of a world where nothing goes bad (ish) and a world where there is bad stuff and there's also good in this world and it's worth fighting for (she says, smelling of po-tay-toes from having finished this book while frying latkes), but this one felt a lot like "there's lots of bad stuff, but it's mostly happening over there and to other people and you can absolutely trust the people in charge that bad things won't happen here". Despite any number of encounters in the middle of the book that suggested that was manifestly not the case. And also it felt like a series of encounters mostly strung together by happening to the same adventure party, which would probably have been more my thing if I actually enjoyed playing D&D.

Okay, this is much meaner than I intended to be; I thought it was really cute and sweet and was not trying to be deep and complicated, but a comfortable and cozy fantasy. And I have an ersatz set of criteria that not even I know that determine when the involuntary suspension of disbelief kicks in.