Just a quick capsule review, because its been a while and because I loved this book so much.

I can't even recall at this point how this book came to be on my
radar. It isn't by an established author, it isn't from a publisher I was previously aware of in the genre press. I can't find any buzz for the book, at all, anywhere on my usual sites. That's all a damned shame, because this is a lovely, fun and enthralling read.

This is fantasy, and the setting is vaguely europeanish, but
we're certainly at a Late Medieval / Early Modern setting, think
the Venice of Agostino Babarigo, or Rome of the Borgia Pope. The
city of Marek was founded hundreds of years earlier and is ruled
by a Council, drawn from the heads of the Thirteen Families who
established the city. Latterly, the Council has seen extension to
the heads of the newly-powerful Guilds, in whose hands much of the
actual trading is now vested.

This political change, driven by economic and societal change, is
the basis for the book's narrative. I'm not going to recite the
story here, but suffice to say that this element delighted me when
reading. The consequences for the city and our protaganists are
myriad and complex, a complexity which rewards the reader with a
knotty and believable tale.

There is magic, of course, this being fantasy, and here again Kemp
succeeds by giving us the outlines, then filling in the complexity
by developments in the story. I found it completely persuasive, and never once did it break me out of my enjoyment of the book.

This is a great book, and I'd gladly recommend it to anyone who
regularly reads fantasy, and is looking for something both short
(283 pages) and twisty. I'll be watching Elsewhen Press in future,
if all of their authors are this good, that could be a great
decision. Happily, I see today that there's a sequel, and I hope to read more of Kemp in the future.