Priest was rough around the edges, but had a solid, well conceived core in its main character and world.

This was obviously a first effort, and the beginning felt very much like the beginning of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign might, but despite that I enjoyed Priest. It felt like something between The Dresden Files and a Forgotten Realms novel.

I really enjoyed the character of Heden, who was definitely unique and interesting, as well as Aderyn, but found myself mostly uninvested in the other characters. If I had more time with the other characters, I might have found them more compelling, but since the novel never presents us with more than a surface view of most, it was hard to stay interested in them. Mostly, I just wanted to solve the mystery, even if I saw the final twist (and the hook for the next novel) coming pretty early.

There's some excellent world-building here, even if there's a few tropes I could have done without. The personification and diversity of the saints was a high point.

There were still a few errors in the text, but nothing that took me out of the story. Overall, this was a great first book, and I'll definitely be reading the sequel. I mentioned The Dresden Files earlier and that is applicable again: this felt like Storm Front, Jim Butcher's first novel. That first novel was rough, but the sequels got so much better so quickly. This feels like it has that same potential.