Really great fantasy, apparently heavily inspired by Sanderson and Jordan, neither of which I've read. I get the sense from reviews that some big WoT fans are annoyed by some similarities and also a little upset at how fast the plot moves because they wanted more detailed descriptions.
This matches really well with my experience: I don't know or care about any "Jordan did it first" criticisms, but I very much appreciate how quickly the plot moves, in a good way! This whole series feels like taking what would have been a 12-volume fantasy epic and editing out all of the time wasting boring stuff, the books that only cover the boring characters and don't advance the plot, and just nailing it.
It was actually very surprising to read fast-paced fantasy that still operates in a deep well-built world with good characters with a well-defined plot arc. Islington knows exactly where this plot is going and how he's going to tie it all together, he has to because the time travel and its implications are crazy complicated and central to the whole story.
I think part of the criticism about lack of detailed descriptions or backstory confuses what I see as a masterful control of plot reveals with a lack of backstory. Having read the full series I can say the answers are there, for the most part, but he's just not going to let you have them yet. I can't recall another fantasy novel where the intrigue is kept so long for such key concepts. I've come to appreciate that one of the most important thing a novel needs to do is keep me hungry for more, to find out why, and Islington does an impressive job of that through the whole series.
The perfect example here is the term "bleeders": we have no idea why they are called that, despite it being an incredibly commonly term, and used hundreds of times in the first book. We don't find out the backstory until halfway through the second book. That's a wait of over 1000 pages.
5 stars.
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