Entertaining, but weaker compared to others

I've gone through three of the author's audiobooks in the last month and finally got around to this one which has been sitting around for too long. Compared to newer works, this one is readable, but the weakest.

I was looking forward to it as I'm a fan of Riyira, Gentleman Bastards and the later Mistborn novels. While it was an interesting story, with a couple of entertaining miscreants, the caper didn't quite do it for me.

I found the first third hard going, namely down to the narration. If the intention was to do a seriously overblown pair of characters, it worked - but my ears suffered for a while and Isabel was a tad weak. There is a very decent amount of worldbuilding thrown in for the duration of the book and the airships and alchemy worked very well. So much so, I'd have like the airship part to have had more airtime, prior to the conclusion and the clever (nasty) twist. Isabel seemed stronger at the end and her character was the better for it.

I'd probably prefer this in print to audio and would give the book 3.5 *'s. I heartily recommend City of Kings and Never Die as they are stonking audiobooks.

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