I was so surprised by how much I liked this! It's a quirky mix of fairy-tale magic and scifi: space ships and space stations and colony worlds and interplanetary politics combine with fairies giving magic gifts at namedays and in place of science and physics we have alchemy and arithmancy. Every chapter begins with a dry, entertaining philosophical meditation about the nature of politics or history or arithmancy or fairy gifts, told in the a slightly tongue-in-cheek voice of a historian narrating the events in question from a centuries-future perspective. Wonderful character work: Rory Thorne has a genuine personality, and the characters of her two mentors are beautifully counterbalanced with each other. Terrific politics. Just plain fun. I immediately started the second book.