It's actually not a great book. The world is pretty well-drawn and the author seems to have thought quite a bit about even minor details. There could have been a little more explanation of the social/governmental structure, but otherwise pretty fair world-building. The plot was pretty messed up in two fairly major ways, and this obviously brought down the whole reading experience.

First, the character's romantic backstory was shoe-horned in. It wasn't well-drawn, it was handled crassly, and it added nothing to the mystery plot or the alternate world; it may be setting up character development in future series installments, but even that could have been handled in better ways. Second, the pacing was way off. I read a downloadable copy of this, so didn't have the physical/visual cue of where my bookmark was to help me anticipate how much story was left. When I got to the end, it felt like a shock. Nothing was fixed, personally or professionally, just passed along.