You may, a chapter or two into this book, wonder if you missed something. You will already be completely sucked in, however, and bravely soldier on to find out what you need to know. And by halfway through you will be so glad you did. 
 I never thought a story about lawyers could be so good--I mean craftsmen. Yeah, they may have crazy powerful magic (enough to raise the dead), but this is basically an episode of Law and Order if you throw in some Gods and vampires and reanimated corpses of Gods and gargoyles. At least, I think it is. I've never actually seen Law and Order. 
 All the characters seem fully human, even the ones who aren't, and have realistic motivations for their actions. We find out the reason for Tara's violent graduation, for Abelard's crisis of faith, for Elayne's surprising recruitment of Tara. 
 And to top it all off, I was so, so very happy with the resolution of the mystery. 
 Basically, once you get past the initial... not slowness, because it's really not, it's more that you feel like someone ripped out the first chapter containing an info dump of world building and left you to figure it out by yourself... once you get past that, this is an amazing novel. 
 Oh, and the lack of a romance. I love a good romance, but sometimes characters aren't in a good place for it, and this is one of them. I mean, a God is dead. There are bigger things to worry about.