I feel like I spent most of this book having no idea what was going on and enjoying it immensely nonetheless.
Elliott, who is very much an epic fantasy writer from the school of "why would I spend pages on background explanations when I could just dump you in the middle of the story," is very good at building the story and, though it feels a bit incomplete, I think that's due to it only being the first book in the series. I want to know more about this world. And the YA approach actually works well, keeping Elliott on a tight leash and the narrative taut.
Good job all round.