Oh. This was so cute, I loved it a lot. 
 Okay, yeah, the pacing was weird and some of the worldbuilding was super info-dumpy, but oh man I was really charmed by this book. Like, classic fantasy at its best. 
 Someone travel back in time and put this in my hands as a teenager because ugh, I really wish I'd read it for the first time then. Wow. 
 ... I am on a quest to acquire the next two books in this first trilogy post-haste.