I can’t say for sure, but I think a lot of the issues I had with this read were due to reading it on audio, rather than with my eyes like I did the first book. 

Even 50% in, I hadn’t managed to piece together who some of the characters were, and what they did in the first book. Not being able to reference the map may have affected this, but I also felt than Parker-Chan didn’t give enough of a reminder of who the characters were. In most cases we got their name and a brief sentence that alluded to the fact they were in the previous book. Nothing else. It also doesn’t help that character lists don’t exist for this series, so despite a thorough search on the web, I couldn’t find anything to help prompt me about who some of the characters were. 

Because I didn’t have that context, I really struggled to understand their motivations, relationships with other characters, and the impact of their actions. 

I realised I was just listening to this to listen to it, rather than really enjoying and engaging with the story. It just wasn’t compelling enough without the context of character histories. All I got out of it was: 

Oh, a war, oh, a war, oh a war, oh some sex scenes where Baoxiang keeps saying how young the guy he’s fucking is, oh a war, oh a war, oh Zhu and Ouyang bonding over being horrible people who just happen to be gender non-conforming, oh look another war. 

Maybe I’ll give it another go if I get my hands on a print or digital copy, but seeing as I didn’t love the first book, it definitely won’t be a priority any time soon.