Did Not Finish at 102 pages. 
 I had high hopes for this book. So much of the fantasy genre is set in an alternate Europe that it seemed, on the surface, a gasp of fresh air. Middle Eastern fantasy? Sign me up NOW, please! :) 
 ...and on some level that's what this is. We have a ghul-hunter, a dervish, and a tribeswoman who takes the shape of a lion. We have invocations to God, and a Traitorous Angel. We have desert, and gardens, and beautiful cities. 
 This should have been wonderful. Instead it was boring. 
 The narrative is unpolished and the characters wooden. Rather than being a new and refreshing take on the fantasy genre, the plot drags the reader through a world that seems constructed of cardboard facades and characters playing dress-up in an 'exotic' land. 
 The doctor was a relatively original character, and probably the reason that I stayed with the book as long as I did. He's 'too old for this,' but unwilling to retire, and the people he hangs out with are much the same. Good for you, Saladin Ahmed. I liked that bit. 
 The two teenagers, on the other hand, (both bound by duty) fighting through their own "oh look I like-like you but I don't dare act on it" dynamic has all the makings of a romantic plot tumor, and I just won't subject myself to that. 
 As another note, it was especially difficult to get behind the sense of 'prayer-as-magic' invocations of the Doctor and the general sense that references to God were everywhere, without any sense of true faith on the part of the characters. (This is a personal observation, YMMV.) 
 I can put up with flat characters if the rest of the story can sustain itself (anyone who regularly reads science-fiction will know the truth of this), but there wasn't a lot of deeper substance to fall back on, here. 
 And so, about the time I realized I was just skimming, picking out a line or two every page to see what was going on, but at the same time not really caring, I decided to just put the book down. There are other books. 
 1/5 stars, not rating officially because of DNF status.