Oh my God, Mark, old boy, you did it again!!!! 
 Ok, I wasn't really a fan of your "Red Queen" saga. I though the main character's constant jibbing got in the way of the story. I must admit I was a bit worried for this one. 
 I'm bad at summarizing books without spoiling them, so I'll just talk about my impressions, OK? 
 This book Bloody Kicks Ass... 
 Long time no read a book where I could simply get lost in a Story Going Somewhere, and be fascinated by the characters. 
 Disclaimer: I've never read the Harry Potter saga, and I don't intend to. I generally don't believe in stories that need more than 3 books to conclude (with a few exceptions), And "Saving The World From the Dark Evil" is a them I've left behind a while back. 
 So one of the things I like is back. We stick with the main character's POV almost throughout the book, and she's a handful, she is, Nona Grey! Sold into slavery by her village, She ends up in a gladiator school, where she does really bad things for really good reasons, which sends her to the gibbet. But Nona's life and her heritage. is nothing, if not full of surprises, for herself as well as for the people around her. 
 Yep, it does feel like a common theme. But Nona is not your common country girl. She's not naive, she's not wide-eyed, and she is definitely not innocent. 
 Ok, I do have one gripe (hey, I wouldn't be me if I didn't) 
 This our girls, she's supposed to be, what, 12, right? Country bumpkin, right? Just a few days into more refined company, right? Then, how the hell come whenever she starts talking about her past, she suddenly gets more vocabulary and rotund phrasings than a Court Bard?? That was downright jarring. It gets more believable when she's been there long enough to have gotten some letters, but in the beginning.... 
 And I guess, that's my only problem with this book. 
 The rest is everything the cover promises: Action, suspense, Magic, intrigue, plot twists... 
 And it's only the first one, folk! 
 Well done, Mark. Really well done.