The Jewel and Her Lapidary

Promising, but not quite as good as I hoped it would be

I really like the base premise of the plot here. But there's a whole lot of 'splaining about how the jewel magic and lapidaries are supposed to work mixed in with the story, and I think that the plot and action suffer extensively due to that. There is the strong germ of a good story idea here; it's just too bad that the execution gets so bogged down in the infodumping. I'd like to see the author rework this into a really enjoyable novel.