better than I was expecting, worse than I might have hoped. This is a Mulan telling (this disney live action one) which asks the question, what if Mulan was driven by selfishness and ambition instead of duty. 

which... I guess? I don't know that it was actually successful in doing that since this Meilin is still motivated by a desire to protect her stepmother and sister (she just hates her dad now and her ambition is inconsistently written throughout. Is she actually ambitious or is she just falling under the influence of the jade pendant which she took before she even knew what it was? Plus, what is her ambition, just not to be prisoner in a woman’s life? It just doesn’t mesh with all of the inner monologue about greed & how much of an abomination she is. 

She's also constantly missing things and falling for every possible trick, but she's also 18. I think if you take this more as a YA novel (no I don't think that's how it's marketed but her character makes sense. The pacing is inconsistent and there are a number of things that make no sense (why is Meilin supposedly really great at Kung Fu but also spends half the book helpless?) but ultimately it's a decent, if unnecessary, retelling. 

 wish it had done a lot more with gender, if I’m honest. Just making a setting very misogynistic and then having the characters be misogynistic isn’t really commentary, in my mind. What was the message? #yesallmen? And how does the love triangle/ish plot line fall into that? I actually feel like if it ended right at the ending, no sequel, that would say quite a bit more but I dont think it is.