I thoroughly enjoyed this but felt there were just too many issues nagging me to give it four stars. 
 I often have issues with believability, in fantasy and science fiction alike. It's not that I'm not fine with magic being magic, but if you want your magic to be convincing, don't tell me it follows laws of logic or physics, only to then disregard those laws. (view spoiler)[The way the steelpushing and ironpulling works in the book fails to take into account physics in ways that are sometimes blatant. Again, this would not have bothered me as much if the writer had not gone out of his way to try to explain what they do as something logical, even paraphrasing the laws of physics (each action has an equal and opposite reaction). (hide spoiler)] 
 Second, the head hopping bothers me. Although sometimes, I can see the motivation for switching the POV within a chapter, often it left me confused. 
 Third, although the build up certainly pays off, I do feel the first third of the book doesn't have enough momentum. There are long sections where too little is changing, either with the characters or the main story. I don't necessarily mean that every story has to be fast-paced. But if the main plot isn't moving ahead or changing, then something else has to be. 
 The fact that I still give the book three stars despite these, in my eyes, quite big complaints, attests to that the end result is a solid work of writing, with an imaginative setting and interesting characters. On the journey, we pass by a lot of the epic fantasy tropes (and even stop to shake hands with a few), but I still feel the writing has enough of its own strength and character that it deserves a high grade.