It's rare for me to find a book written in first-person that I absolutely love, but this is one of the very few. 
 It is rare for me to absolutely love a book that was this hyped-up to me prior to reading it. Luckily, this one lived up to the hype. 
 Despite its length (700+pages) the sentences are crafted in such a way that you never feel as though the book is getting longer the further you read. I loved the unique voice and telling-style of this book. I liked the "Princess Bride" and "Neverending Story"-ness of it dipping out of past-tense first person and back into third-person reminding me every so often that this story is being told by the main character to the fantasy-version of a journalist or biographer. 
 The book is well-written, interesting, and filled with likeable characters and just enough action to keep you from getting restless while you read. It is surprisingly clean, even lacking most of the innuendo and crudeness that tends to pervade the modern fantasy novel. 
 The one "con" to the story is that it does sort of just ... end. It is the first book in a trilogy, and I would venture to say that it does not stand on its own very well, so if you don't like cliff-hanger endings or novels that can't stand alone outside of their trilogy, then you probably won't enjoy this book. 
 I do not have that problem, which is why I am able to give it 5 stars.