The author's narrative voice is engaging and unique. I think, with another five or ten pages, he could have given us a four- or five-star book. One minor improvement I might suggest is foreshadowing some events with a subtle hint by revealing some background about another murder of crows at the beginning of the book rather than introducing it only close to the end. A more significant improvement would be to carry events in the revolt further, do something interesting with aftermath, and only then conclude things by dropping the other shoe, rather than dropping it in the middle of the climax to end the story altogether too abruptly.

To be more specific:

I think a (perhaps somewhat summarized) conclusion to the revolt, in which the "good guys" win but -- in the process -- become the new bad guys, showing a new tyranny rising from the ashes of the old, or even without that rising tyranny but merely showing that the newly-freed "citizens" of the freatherine must recover their lives from the devastation of war, would then yield a greater impact with the introduction of the coming of human property development.

As it stands, this reads like an excellent story ended too soon because the author did not come up with a good way to set the stage for the conclusion. It's still worth reading, for a variety of reasons, including the obvious storyteller's talent of the author; it just also feels like a missed opportunity to be (for lack of a less pretentious sounding term) truly great. ( )