Lets get the negatives out the way first shall we! 
 I am going to be brutally honest. If this wasn't a buddy read and 'if' I hadn't seen all the hype about the following books in the trilogy, I think I would have 'given up on' this about half way in. 
 I stuck with it, mainly because the comments I was seeing from friends (Luna, TS and EON) in book Two and Three. I honestly felt at times, that I was reading a different series. 
 The book has it flaws, which I am giving a bit of leeway for a first book, but there are some very poor lazy writing on offer in parts of the book that annoyed me. I know it shoudn't but it does. Shit foreshadowing and a healthy dose of Deux Ex Machina is always going to bug fans of epic stories, that are used to everything having a purpose and built as part of the story. Not something like : 
 'Do you have a family?' 
 'Yes, they were murdered by a man years ago' 
 'Oh, I am sorry' 
 The stable master suddenly tensed, a rider on a horse was approaching the castle 
 'What is it? Who is that?' 
 'The man who murdered my family' 
 Ugh! 
 This is the first time I have ever read a book where I can completely see, (like it was highlighted), where an author went back into the story to create a moment, that would explain (or help) with a later plot. The fact that somebody can suddenly turn up somewhere and use a magical skill that there was absolutely no freaking hint of for the first half of the book to explain was so convenient it made me cringe. In fact I showed it to my daughter as an example of bad writing. She made me laugh by saying "That reminds me of Hunger Games and the shooting down of spaceships with bow and arrows", which did make me laugh. 
 One last thing (the lazy bit again), seriously, you can't base an entire clever plan to fool your enemy by just wearing a coloured cloak. Not once but twice! I mean, come on, surely someone would say, "maybe they brought those cloaks and pretended to be from there? Should we check that before we jump to conclusions and start a war?" And what spy, intent on murder wears his house cloak to go an assassinate an ally? MORE DEPTH REQUIRED IN PLOT. 
 Ok, rant over. 
 The good things: 
 It did feel like the first two thirds of the book was written a long time ago and the author came back to it. You know that feeling you get when reading a series and you are like "its ok" and then before you know it, you are immersed in the series and desperate to read more about your loved characters? (Ryria, The Expanse, Ketty Jay anyone?) You can see the author getting used to the story and the characters and really starts to write well. Well there is a lot of that in this book. The last third is like the author found some new lease of life in the story. The pace picked up dramatically (the first third was ridiculously pedestrian, even for world and character building, I was waiting for an Ais Sadei to pop out of a room) and the plot tightened up and some decent twists and backstabbery started to become apparent. It also got a lot darker. Again leading me to suspect it finished a very darker book than it started (almost like the author was a Jordan fan then read some Abercrombie or Larewence). 
 There are some pretty good character and a lot of vanilla ones, but the time invested in some of the character build does have me hopeful for future growth, I do suspect that with the largish cast, we are going to see some killing off of favs as it works for Martin, so why not for me mentality? 
 So as you can see, my positives are somewhat light compared to my beefs. I am going to read book Two, only because of the way the last third finished and gave me hope and because all of the squeeing and tears being shed I see in the comments for the next two books. (you know who you are) 
 The journey continues with fingers crossed.