I tried to play it alone, with the description up on another monitor. It might have spoiled some of the intended magic, but the lovely attention to detailing was not wasted on me. I ready did feel like Indiana Jones with a tome in my other hand.
I did run out of time multiple times, but the process didn't feel insulting at all. Maybe it's the Myst/Riven nature that I really can like games like that. Putting the timer in the hourglass was a nice touch, but I do think that lost a lot of the 'count down' aspects.
The controls were intuitive, though I spent more time reading and thinking than playing anything. I think one quick easy way to boost retention would be to add a couple clickable fun animations. They likely wouldn't confuse the player if the "needs a manual to play" was more prominent anyway.
Art gorgeous. Enough said there. I didn't pick up on right click to look around right away. It could probably be covered in one small popup, or adding some accessibility forgiveness would help too. (IE, right click... or WASD... or arrows,)