Well written with immediately likable characters, Shadows of Ivory is an unusual fantasy in its archeological focus and it utilizes this focus to good effect and degree without it ever crossing over in the boring or the too much.
Or MC, Eska, is likable, complex, and wonderfully intelligent and you fully understand how she commands the loyalty she does throughout the book. She confront a great variety of challenges, perils, and conflicts throughout and resolves them in a variety of ways. I also particularly enjoyed her friendship with the librarian (who’s name escapes me) and I wished we had more of these.
The secondary characters are equally solid and well conceived.
The world building is solid and promises to be better as we unearth more of the magic and the history as the story continues.
The plot is excellent and well paced, and does a good job of varying itself up and presenting the readers with curve ball or sudden shifts. A potentially criticism is that it does not achieve a whole lot though; one minor plot point is introduce and resolved, and the rest is mostly just settling the readers into the larger plot.