Pretty good book, with some interesting characters and good worldbuilding. The main duo’s stregnths and compliments are very apparent – sometimes eye-rollingly so. The skillset of our protagonist is one I’ve always liked – genius in a land of giants. He’s actually motivated by realistic character-driven goals, rather than being bullied into this by the plot, which I quite liked. His slight of hand is very well done, and I like the way he misdirects things. The only issue I have is that he’s nowhere near as skillfull at reading people as the author wants us to think he is.
By half way through the book, he’s talked circles around three people, and all of those critical, plot-relevant conversations were by far the weakest points of the story. As an example, at one point a character explicitly professes their patriotism, and not four lines later the MC is backing them into a corner using their patriotism as leverage. If done more subtly, it would have beautiful. As it is, it’s clear the author isn’t as smart as the MC needs to be, and the story is suffering for it.
Overall, I liked it, but the flimsiness of our main characters primary strength rubs me the wrong way, and I won’t be continuing. YMMV so I do still recommend it.