THE CAPITAL isn't really the first book in a trilogy, it is the first third of a ~600-page book. I became aware of this thanks to other reviews when I was about halfway through it, but i went ahead to finish it so that I can evaluate it for myself. To treat it as part one of a book I would have to not review it, but also it presents itself in some places as the first book in a series.

Nothing is really resolved, and it ends at a rather dramatic cliffhanger, clearly designed to get someone to pick up the next volume. 

The world building involves a lot of medieval fantasy politics, with homosexuality only recently being decriminalized, and the kingdom about to get its first queen after a history of only kings. This makes it a queer fantasy in the context of lingering prejudices and recent terror, especially for the necromancer who comes from a place that hasn't updated these policies. 

The dialogue is okay but not amazing. I prefer witty and dialogue-heavy books and while this certainly attempts a lot of banter it's neither deep nor informative. I don't have a great sense of coherency for the world building, as it seems to have a kind of generalized approach to the magic system. One of the more blatant instances of this is when the necromancer refers to the river as the River Styx, a place which is pretty firmly grounded in Greco-Roman mythology and doesn't fit with the generically European medieval feel of the rest of the story. The overall effect is one too ambiguous to create its own mythology, but randomly specific enough to be jarring.

Overall this was fun but left me a bit frustrated. If I stop now then I'll get no resolution, but I haven't yet decided what to do.