"An epic fantasy in miniature" is the perfect description of this book. It's a carefully conceived world, a kingdom with obvious and brilliantly worked out magic. In the hands of a different author, it would be 500 pages long and it could probably support that size narrative. What Wilde does with it instead is equally fascinating.
It also has the short story tendency towards spareness and elegance in the face of exuberance. I wish I knew more.

I'm still not sure what I've just read. It was good, don't get me wrong, but it was weird!
The premise unfolds in such a way that the explanations for the weirdness are themselves incredibly bizarre. It was delightful to watch Black completely ignore the divide between science fiction and fantasy—it reminds me of Charlie Jane Anders but without the interesting philosophical underpinnings. Black is interested instead in writing an epic speculative fiction. And I enjoyed it very much.

Another excellent Liz Bourke recommendation. (Thanks!)
Sometimes I forget that, with audiobooks, my usual rule that a book has 20 minutes to give me something to care about isn't a successful approach. I have no problem with books that open with a prologue that is not immediately relevant although later becomes revelatory, but when a book I'm listening to in audio does it, I feel like I've sunk all this time into the beginning story and have no payoff.
Moral of the story: it's worth it in the end. At least for this book.
The jacket Information called it a space opera in the vein of Lois McMaster Bujold, which is the single best way to sell me on a work of SF. And Bonesteel did not disappoint. Compelling characters, a plot that—after the prologue—felt nearly breakneck even in audiobook form, and the best kind of space mystery. It was very much to my taste. I listened to it in three days.
The one sign I found that it was a debut novel was Bonesteel's tendency to rely on expressions and the look in someone's eyes to convey a hell of a lot more information than I've ever been able to read in my closest friends. It felt like a bit of a cheat to give us a sense of multiple characters thoughts while still staying in third person limited pov. And without making the characters talk to one another. But neither of these made me enjoy the book materially less.

I enjoyed this book, although I think I might have enjoyed it more had I read it before Bardugo's other series. She's a more assured writer in the next series and the maturity shows in the characters she handles, the complexity of the plot, not to mention the morality.
Which is not to say this wasn't a good book. I really enjoyed it and the world that Bardugo has created is exactly the sort of epic fantasy I enjoy.
[spoiler]I should have seen the Darkling coming and I didn't because I am so used to the "ancient powerful being falls for self-conscious teenaged girl" trope, especially in YA, that I didn't blink. And, I admit, he had something of Loki as played by Tom Hiddleston about him. But I was delighted when the story actually took a "who are you kidding, this is not how it works!!" approach. A+ on that![/spoiler]

Novell(a|ette) is the perfect length for this story. The unexplainedness would have buckled under a longer book, but the amount of time it took to make sense (and the amount of time the reader was kept in suspense) worked out just right.
On the other hand, it felt almost like a long prologue to a story ahead. (Fran Wilde's Jewel and Her Lapidary struck me the same way). So while the it wrapped up neatly at the end, the part of my brain that spends too much time reading long novels was saying "Wait, that's it!?"

I knew from the podcast "The Incomparable" that this book would be about sapient animals in space. So I assumed I knew how weird it was going to be. I was wrong.

I was so so wrong.

Do I start with the Jewish elephants in space? Or the talking to dead people? Or the ongoing attempts to understand what's going on and when this is happening and if it's science fiction or fantasy or weird-spec-fic? I think I need a WTSF tag. (Worst of all, I'm not even sure if it's the weirdest thing I've read all year and we're only two weeks into January.)
Anyway, this book was brilliant. I can see why it was up for the Nebula, Schoen does some really interesting things with the way that memory and personhood works and I'm almost sad he didn't have the time to interrogate the rest of the conceits that spun his universe into being. The thoughtfulness of the science fiction works with the sheer bizarreness of the setting. Although I'd advise against learning too much about this book before reading it. Meet the weirdness as it comes.

I feel vaguely guilty marking this book as science fiction as the science is so completely WTF as to maybe shade it into some other genre.
On the other hand, it's a space opera with battles and internecine politics and undead generals who may or may not be insane and it's weird and did I mention that the calendar controls the technology?
So strange. So much fun. I have such a soft spot for space operas about soldiers making moral decisions in the face of a complex government.

I'm tempted to tag this as fantasy just on principle...

The thing about Rogue One the movie is that, while I enjoyed it tremendously, it did its characters a disservice. There were so many interesting figures at the heart of the rebellion and the movie just didn't spend enough time on their back stories and motivations and self-hood. The book fixes some of that, although it's the novelization of the movie and isn't allowed to do things like change dialogue and scenes to better fit its new medium. For example, K-2S0 is just not as funny without Tudyk's performance. Bohdi Rook gets the best treatment while, Jyn feels like Freed is trying to write a different character than Felicity Jones played. Everyone else lands somewhere in between. I'm glad I read it, but it wasn't quite what I wanted it to be.

This book suffered a bit from second-book syndrome where it's neither building the world nor reaching an exciting climax, but getting the wandering through Emyn Muil bits out of the way.
Sturmhond made up for like 90% of that though, so I'm okay. Definitely still like this series and I love the way that Bardugo uses Russian mythology as a basis for her magic and universe. Third one is on hold.

I don't remember when I read this book, but it was a fascinatingly weird experience