I like the premise, I like the possibilities the core characters present, I like the world building and overall I feel there’s a lot of potential for the story. Personally the problem is with the pacing and tone shifts. I felt it went from a YA esque adventure story, (just enough detail in the action sequences to get what was going on, but not a ton of real danger) to not quite grim dark, but definitely dark in an instant. When that sequence was over the tone switched back to the lighter tone just as quickly. Those scenes felt like a square peg being shoved into a round hole. It felt like this scene was the authors favorite based on the discordant level of detail and they built the rest of the narrative just to tell this part. Since the rest wasn’t as exciting to write the tones of the build up and of the dark scene(s) felt like they belonged to two different books.