Dragons & Jetpacks discussion

Has anyone else read this book? And if so, what did you think?

I had really high hopes for it and felt like it fell flat but I'm not going to get into details unless other people have read it.
I'll be out of town for a few days but I look forward to any responses when I return!

I have read it and enjoyed it. I think I rated it 4 stars.

I really enjoyed the very imaginative world-building and the complexity of it.
This was definitely not your typical fantay set-up.
The characters were a bit distanced and that is one of the main complaints I often see referred to, when it comes to that book.

And of course it is hard to ignore the whole feminism discussion surrounding it, but I didn't find the issue as forced on me as other readers did.

But I'm mainly a world-building guy and that is where the book really shined for me. :)

I LOVED the world building even though there were parts that I felt the author could have fleshed out more and it would have added greatly to it. (Some ideas just seemed incomplete to me.)
I was one of those people who had a HUGE issue with the characters. They were all so flat to me. The only ones that I felt had much growth were Lilia and Ahkio.
As far as the whole feminism thing, I enjoyed the role reversal tremendously however I didn't feel like Hurley knows how to write a good female character. Having so many female POV and obviously being female myself, one would have thought I would have connected to at least one female character. The only character I connected with was Ahkio. Many times he felt like the only authentic person.
I dunno, I had such high hopes for this and there were so many good aspects but I was left feeling pretty disappointed. I ended up giving it 3 out of 5 stars and I think it only got to 3 for me because of the world building.
I would still read the second book though in hopes things get better.

I disliked the role reversal because it was just that... a simple reversal of stereotypical flat characters. I don't like characterizations like that when they're the typical genders (overbearing males, weak females) so reversing them, while a neat writing workshop discussion point, leaves me with characters I don't like whose gender is reversed. This might be interesting in a shorter piece to provoke discussion but even then the point is simplistic - "lets interrogate certain fantasy stereotypes by flipping the genders and viewing our reactions to the characters." For a fairly long novel it wore no me and felt too obviously like Hurley was making a social point vs building an interesting dynamic.

Lilia was particularly unsympathetic, thwarting every attempt to guide her for reasons that made little sense. This was partly because we knew what was happening and that her actions were (or at least at the middle of the novel are) pointless. Because of that we don't feel her emotional journey since we know what she discovers.

The really annoying thing for me is that as writing I like the book - she's got real talent and the prose as prose is very good as is the world building. But the characters held it back so much that I'm midway through and may not finish.

Very good points Rick!
It was not a novel that kept me coming back for more. I put it down frequently with sometimes days between reading it and read something else in the mean time.

This is now on my to read list :)

I'm interested to know what you think when you're finished. :)