I'm a big fan of Jen Williams's Winnowing Flame trilogy, and I found a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses here; fantastic worldbuilding, well planned and executed plot, decent characters and relationships that are missing just a little spark that carries them into being great. Something about the pacing in Talonsister suffers in comparison, feeling simultaneously slow in the broader sense but fast in each short chapter focused on one of several povs. The bigger picture doesn't all fall into place until very late, and dragging myself there one chapter at a time took me much longer than usual. I do find something to enjoy in all of the characters (even the antagonists are fun, though tropey), some of them standouts like Leven the amnesiac soldier, Ynis the griffon girl, or Belise the former street rat and her "guardian" Kaeto. The last parts of the book as all the threads converged and consequences of their actions emerged were fantastic, enough for me to start up book 2 of the duology immediately.