I don't know, I'm not a second-world fantasy fan, and I really enjoyed this book. I particularly liked seeing Acacia as a metaphor for America, another country where the ruling class likes to ignore or forget the deaths and suffering that put them in power, the laboring class that keeps them there, and the common people who give up their children (right now as soldiers) so the rest can be free.

I also appreciated the very individual relationships between the children and their father, and how that was a hands-on relationship, with him putting them to bed and everything. There are not enough intimate depictions of fatherhood in the genre.

Some of the plot points, like the hidden passageways conveniently being discovered by one of the children and forgotten by *everyone else* seemed... both contrived and overly familiar. But on the whole I found the writing refreshing and the perspectives interesting. Complex characters instead of just out-and-out bad guys. That sort of thing.