The first third of this book was pretty great--seemed like a great set-up for some kind of feminist fairy tale. I liked the opening, and the first bit of her stint in the Dragon's castle. I enjoyed the friendship between the main character and Kasia. I was so excited for where this was going to go. But after she started to learn magic (which she began super good at with no study at all of course--even though most witches have to study for decades to pass the test of whatever), I started to get major Hermione/Snape fan fiction vibes, which never let up. I became less interested in the big part of the story as I read on, and hardly cared about what was going on in the capital. Not enough time passed in the book—everything happened so fast, and she didn’t really learn from her mistakes. Even mistake she made ended up magically saving people's lives. Then the Hermione/Snape scenes at the end just made the whole thing kind of "meh."
Just looked up the author, and found she got her start writing fan fiction on AO3. Does not surprise me at all. Nothing wrong with it, just not what I want to read in novel form.