This was extremely slow in a way that felt bogged-down to me rather than deliberate. The extensive world-building also came at the cost of the characters in my opinion, they were all rather two-dimensional.

The queer elements of this were also quite disappointing - this book is lauded as having good queer representation but I found it way too heteronormative. Even having a gender-flipped world of queens and the world inherited via the female line, there was still a lot of discussion about the queen marrying a man and producing an heir, and almost all of her value is placed in her ability to do so.