Overall I rather liked this. After getting accustomed to what I felt was a bit of stilted third person narration, I enjoyed the story. The book did require something I was required to do with Moby Dick - during Moby Dick, in order to actually finish it, I needed to skip over the scenes discussing anatomy of whales and differences between American and British rope curling, during Dragonlinked I did feel the need to skim/skip over section about leatherworking and some of the other more mundane things the author did include. This author didn't go into quite the detail as Melville, but it was sometimes a bit overwhelming.
As the book is left open for sequels, I do think it is fair to say that some of those storylines may not appeal, and if you read this, you can make your own decisions if the foreboding is acceptable or not.
Again, I do think it is a promising start, and I did enjoy the world and characters created.