Rating this feels weird, somehow.
R. Lau's books remain awesome (also, h/t to Ilana Kurshan for an excellent translation) as an introduction to the people of these books.
This is the first book where my sense of Lau as a literary writer reading character into the events of the narrative truly comes clear. His approach is fascinating and useful and now I want to go back through the book and note down all the sources I want to follow up on to learn more. Most particularly, I want to know what we actually know from a historical perspective and where we are speculating.