This book shares with many fantasy novels a roughly early modern European setting and main characters who are poor, somewhat principled criminals living on the margins of that setting (the latter also reminds me a bit of the author's portrayal of the economically marginalized in the Expanse as well) . There is an aspect of systematic racism in the world, where the poor people just happen to be be one ethnic minority and live on one side of the river. By magical realism I mean that while magical elements are important, the plot is mainly about more mundane things that might get nudged one way or the other by magic (or by luck). All of this is well and good (if not especially unusual in contemporary fantasy), but what made the book a bit more interesting for me was the way it played with the ideas of hero/antihero/main-character/supporting-character in interesting ways.