My own bit of Armchair speculation, based on having run the game for people who are not experienced HQ players, but not (I don't think) for completly novice roleplayers.
I think the game is very easy for players to pick up if the GM knows what they are doing (or is able to convince the players that they do, at any rate) The core mechanics are very simple - 1 dice vs 1 number on the character sheet. Masteries and Bumps are a slight complication, but players don't need to worry about which dice to roll, or how many, or do they need to add the dice up or treat them individually.
I think the game is quite easy to run, once you have got your head around the way it works, and is very easy to improvise in. Whether previous experience in running other (types of) game makes it easier or harder to "grok" the HQ way is hard to say, and may vary from person to person anyway.
In many ways HQ may be easier for a "first game", precisely because it lacks all those traditional RPG artefacts (pages of weapon stats, pages of spells, pages of skill descriptions...) - but it's going to be hard to get empirical evidence for this.
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