Just short of the classics but a great deal.

It’s weird for a sci-fi novel’s best feature to be it’s handling of magic and religion but in this case, it’s their inclusion that really elevates the series. This wasn’t written to be a deep or complex book that takes positions on big issues and its impressive that it calls out those issues so often without doing so. I appreciate that almost every character is given a foil (or two) and that it sets up procedural/formulaic plots only to break them. I feel like if the author did set out with greater ambitions, he probably could have delivered – but then we wouldn’t have this delightful, easy listening and sometimes we need that more.