I wrote a review on goodreads, so I'm just going to copy and paste it here. 

I DNF-ed at 32% by falling asleep. I was so eager and excited when I heard the book pitch and how excited the booktubers I followed were talking about it. Unfortunately, I just cannot get into it. The writing style was just not for me. The exposition dump was too much, but maybe it's because I already knew the historical context in-depth as I have studied it prior. A lot of telling, no showing to explain the history of the world which... is weird as it is marketed as a historical fantasy. The pacing was off as we had years of growth between one chapter to another but nothing for us to know what we could have missed etc.

I wished this book was paced better - pacing that would have allowed me to be invested in the main character and the world that was built. We could have explored the grief, the struggle, the joys of being accepted into the monastery, the grit of survival and desperation, the difficulty of being a "boy" a lot more but it was a touch-and-go situation.