Spine of the Dragon was a prose forward novel.  It has heavy world building, short chapters, and a lot of POV's.   It was my first Kevin J Anderson, and I might give him another shot, but I prefer a plot forward story.   

I had trouble identifying what the plot was until I was more than halfway through the novel.  The quick POV shifts made it hard to connect to any of the characters.  As soon as I started to get comfortable with a character, I was ripped away to a different one in a different location in the world.

The way sex was used in the novel repeatedly was uncomfortable.  It wasn't titillating, but it was rampant with sexual assault and rape.   Consensual sex also occurred rarely, but even it seemed to be used for control.  As expected, the female characters took the brunt of this, and it informed most of their decision-making. 

The book is part of a series, and it does leave you in a place.