Recommendation: The Anvil of the World, by Kage Baker

I recently finished the third book in the late Kage Baker's fantasy cycle and will be posting a review of it shortly.  It has been a while since I read the first book, so I won't have a detailed review of it here, however I'd like to give it a recommendation, especially since I recently had a discussion with a friend about it.  She was not normally a fantasy reader and was interested in books that might get her introduced to the genre.  The first book that came to mind was The Anvil of the World, by Kage Baker.