skygiants

Yeah -- and I am super into loyalty stuff, but it never quite sold me emotionally on the loyalty relationships as relationships because I never exactly felt like I saw ... what they were based on ... But the characters in and of themselves were all very likeable and enjoyable to read about, and I would certainly read more about them!

(The 'why magic' thing never pinged for me so much, I think because I feel like that's often fairly par for the course with politicalish fantasy -- the magic is basically an excuse to make up an interesting different world and call it fantasy. Which is cool by me!)