clearly i'm the only one so far, but the really obvious paralleled to to British History grated with me. Maybe because I'm an English student of History, so Henry VIII, James I and all that has been fairly well covered in my studies, so the parallels really stuck out. I have nothing wrong with stories being set in historical settings, or in setting that strongly resemble historical settings, but one that clearly parallels a particular period, while replacing all the names and screwing around with stuff to make the story work just doesn't work for me. Given the intellectual upheaval and change of the reformation, and the multiplicity of heretic burnings, I don't see why this could not have been an alternative history setting that kept all the actual detail and maybe threw in dragons and magic and all that. Likewise, I don't see why a completely different fantasy situation could not have been created that did not reference actual history so closely, but still set up the right situation. Somehow, this story occupied a halfway house that was somewhat uncomfortable for me.
That's a real shame, because I really liked the characters, plot and themes expressed, I just could not shake the discomfort with the setting - it was too close to alternative history without actually being alternative history.