A beautifully written, deeply descriptive, obviously passionate literary fantasy loved by R.F Kuang... But I did not like it. This was so overwhelming boring. I tried forcing myself to like it, with the hopes that it would get better, or that something would click and I would ultimately fall in love with this book like I did with Babel but this was just too slow for my liking. I thought it would be more mythical and whimsical, given the cover, and how people have been talking about this book, but ultimately not for me.

I may give this another chance later on in the year, however.