The pacing is so bad that it feels like nothing happens for the first 60% of the book and if I'd gone into this knowing this was absolutely more historical fiction and the fantasy was a small part of it then I would've been okay with that and my rating would've been different, because I have a different standard for historical fiction. But this was advertised very differently to me and the fact that it took me a little over two months to read? Plus the footnotes were a little much and drew me out of the story too often.