I tagged this as "non-European fictional world" because most of the novel is spent in the fantasy!Saharah desert.

I really like this book. Two of the main characters, Harrier and Tiercel, find themselves having to defend a city against a conquering army. The two have to struggle with the fact that, to defend the city, they're going to have to murder thousands of people in the opposing army when neither young man has ever so much as hurt someone before. I thought the moral dilemma was really interesting and I appreciated that the characters actually thought about the implications of what they were doing. I'm really looking forward to the last book in the trilogy now.