The premise of this book is incredibly promising. In this urban fantasy, magical families co-exist under an uneasy truce as they each shore up their spheres of power and influence. The protagonist, Emiko Soong has a dark troubled past. She once served as the Blade of the Soong Clan but that came to a bloody end as she became the Butcher of Beijing. The story picks up with her living a somewhat ordinary life in San Francisco. Despite trying to keep her head down and luve an average life, the political intrigues and magical threats contine to intrude on her life.

This should be fascinating. I particularly lived the world building and the way magic is woven into the modern world. The problem is with the execution. It felt like most of the book was exposition. Instead of living in this magical modern world, we're given dry instruction on it. Instead of getting to know the characters as they navigate through the story, we get info dumps on them. This really harmed the pacing, especially in moments that should have been high tension since those moments would be inflated with dumps of information that removed all urgency. It was difficult to care about the characters or their plight when the narrative treated even the most dangerous situations as though they were casual interruptions to the info dumping.

Again, I loved the premise and the world building. I might look into the sequel if only for that.

Thank you to Tor, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.