3.5 stars.

Fantastic worldbuilding and a vivid plot, though the development felt kind of choppy? Like, the scenes flowed and I could follow the narrative pretty easily, but Xifeng's internal conflict seemed to jump between extremes which I found a little hard to sympathize with. And I know vanity is a huge part of the Snow White/Evil Queen story, but I found myself annoyed by how frequently she expressed concerns for her pretty face; even with the backstory of Guma emphasizing it as her one gift from the gods, her experience of "attractiveness" privilege, and the general patriarchal society this is set in, I almost felt as though she was just going through the motions as a reflex or ingrained habit. The focus is also very centralized on Xifeng, so I thought the secondary and minor characters seemed pretty flat and therefore hard to connect with — so since I honestly didn't like Xifeng very much, I didn't really have anyone to root for. Which is such a shame, because I generally love palace politics and morally ambiguous/dark characters and magic with consequences.

I was honestly contemplating DNFing during the exposition, in part because of all the violence that I found hard to stomach. It did serve a plot purpose, but there's still quite a lot of it. Add that to the abundance of unhealthy relationships (not to say that they're lauded, but I get secondhand exhaustion from characters who can't trust anyone), and I found myself rolling my eyes quite a bit during the first half. As the narrative progresses I did find myself more interested and invested, though I found the "twists" more tropey than satisfying to have predicted correctly. And considering I love retellings and fanfiction, I'm not quite sure where this came from, but it was definitely a big influence on my enjoyment of the story. The last third or so was the best, for me. Where the plot is moving, machinations come to fruition, characters demonstrate development (or lack thereof), and the original fairy tale becomes most recognizable.

Overall, I didn't dislike this, but it wasn't nearly as great as I expected from hearing so much about it.