I honestly thought this would be a 5-star read, no questions asked. The characters are beautiful, interesting, and hilarious. The steampunk, alternative history of Egypt combined with mythology across the world was incredible. The amount of strong, badass women (both the good guys and the bad guys!) were top-notch! And curmudgeonly, sassy guys as a bonus? A million times yes. 

Ultimately, I decided to dock half a star simply because the ending felt a bit lackluster compared to the first 3/4ths of the book. The motives of the villain were a bit questionable, so many cool world-building doors opened that I wished for more of, and things almost came to a close too easily.

While I feel like these things would typically cause me to rate a book a lot lower than this one, somehow it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the book hardly at all just left me kind of 🤔. Honestly an impressive feat in and of itself. 

But dear god, I want more. I'm planning to dive into all of the novellas, but pls pls pls give us more of this world and these characters 😭

Also... Siti is a literal dream of a woman and I would worship at her altar if she were real 🥵🫣