As far as I can tell, this was Rogerson's first published novel, and in my opinion it matches that designation.

This is not to disparage Rogerson or the idea of first books generally - every author must start somewhere, and even though this book is imperfect, Rogerson's potential as an author is clear. She seems passionate about the genres of YA and fantasy, and has plenty of exciting ideas to utilize. However this book, for all its genuinely interesting concepts and its rich tone, suffers from a pacing and a scope problem (pacing in that I grew bored around the halfway mark, scope mostly in that I wish it were bigger. It's probably best that she kept it small, it's an appropriate size for a first novel.) Now that Rogerson has the experience of publishing a book under her belt, I hope she can take what she's learned and use it to expand the scope of her future books, pushing deeper into the themes she seems interested in but only managed to scrape here.