Disclaimer: I received an e-ARC from netgalley in exchange for a review.

This is a relatively short novella. One thing that speaks for it is that it can be understood if you haven't read the original story it is based on (The Count of Monte Christo). On its own it is an interesting space opera featuring a marginalized main character and an anti colonialist revolutionary plot. In the first half of the story we are told about the reason for Virika's imprisonment and her time in prison. This part of the story is interesting and nicely paced. Her emotions are clear, her loss heartbreaking and I really enjoyed the character building provided here. While there wasn't a lot of world building at that point, the story provided enough opportunities to understand what was going on anyway and by being in a very confined space it worked brillantly. When I reached the second part of the book, the escape and her revenge I was incredibly excited for this character I had started to really care for to finally shine in action. Unfortunately the lenght of the novella really started to shine through here. Many things happen in the second part of the novella and the plot speeds up a lot. This wouldn't be soo bad, if there weren't also many scene changes, which made the story feel a bit underdeveloped at times.
Especially towards the last third of the book there are a few time skips, which greatly impacted my enjoyment of the story. We are told of some really interesting things Virika did... We just don't really see her do them and if we get a scene it is short and more tell than show. Including these scenes instead of skipping them would have increased tension, extended the story a bit and slowed the pacing in the second half of the book, which were my three main issues with the story.
Despite my criticisms here I still enjoyed the story and found it particularly interesting in its depiction of what oppression does to marginalized people and how they can internalize it. I also did very much enjoy reading about a colonized lesbian woman getting revenge on the empire that betrayed her.
The romance portrayed in the novella is also very sweet and I adored the bonding over shared childhood food, but the falling in love bit could have been more interesting if it had been extended a bit. Like this it happened very fast and felt a bit flat, as I couldn't really get that invested.
All in all an interesting story, even if it was too short to live up to its potential, but I definitely want to read more by the author since I can see a lot of really interesting parts here.

tw: suicide, racism, homophobia, murder, sexual harassment, mass murder, isolation, imprisonment