This is fantasy for historical novel fans, based on highly detailed world-building and the sort of intrigue, battles, and formalized social structures that dominate them. The environments and very different lifestyles of the enclaves are meticulously described, as are their SCA, Tolkeinesque and other underpinnings. In truth, there's a bit too much such description for my taste, probably in part because so much is only described, rather than discovered through experience. As the third book in a trilogy, a lot of stage setting has already been done, but the author does a good job of filling the gaps without continually stopping the story to do so. A benefit of having so much of that stage setting done is that the resulting story is freed to become an almost epic sweep of move and countermove, seen from multiple perspectives as the story moves toward a classic tragedy-triumph conclusion.

Definitely a curl up in a comfortable chair to enjoy sort of book while being very grateful you're merely visiting vicariously from your own, more comfortable, if less exciting and colorful world.