I picked this one up through someone else's recommendation who I think said they were surprised not more people had read it. However, I wasn't particularly impressed with this one, with the writing of some of the female characters really not working for me.
There were some fantastic, lush settings for this novel with sprawling, vibrant cities contrasted with the dust of the desert. When we ventured out of the city in the first two or so chapters, I was curious to see what else we would unlock in this fantasy world...only for the group to turn around and go straight home again. The bad guys in this were refreshingly unusual even if they felt a little underdeveloped - by the time we reached the crux of the plot, I still felt like I didn't really know who everyone was and why they were fighting?
One thing I will appreciate is how much our married couple really did spend the whole story thinking about how much they just wanted to be at home with each other - really respect that.
I also saw that this was blurbed by Lev Grossman, whose book it's safe to say I hated, and I'm not saying there's a correlation but I did think it was interesting...