Wow -- very impressive. First of a trilogy. I'd ordered the other two by about halfway through.
The author has a very distinctive (direct, frank) voice -- which means that the intrigue has to come from what the characters don't say, which works very nicely. The only downside of this is that all the characters sound pretty much the same; Vaatze is clearly seen as an alien by most of the others, but he sounds identical to them.
How come the Mezentines haven't invented printing? How come communication is so fast? And I'd really like a map of the world...
ISBN 1841498769.