GIRL POWER!!! That's what my happy, feminist heart was screaming for hours after I finished this novel. My brother caught a telling video of me screaming, "I JUST WANT TO DESTROY THE PATRIARCHY" and while I am not normally fond of shouting, it felt good to just take up space after reading this story about women stepping up and owning their own rights to exist.

This book was like nothing I've ever read before. It was so beautiful and enchanting in so many ways, and so heart breaking and tragic in others. The world was so rich and lush, but even though so much was going on, I wasn't ever lost (maybe a bit confused at times, but never so much that I couldn't follow what was happening). The twists and turns this book took threw me in the best possible way. I saw some of them coming, but definitely not all of them, and they were all still enjoyable and thrilling.

This book was also just so ... like, healthy? Which is really uncommon to see in YA Fantasy/Sci-Fi, tbh. The society was so messed up and toxic and awful (which /is/ common), but Zetian was just ... so amazing. She stood up for herself. She didn't take crap from anybody. She thought about things in a way that defied what society had tried so hard to drill into her; that she was a human being worthy of love, that she took up space and deserved that space, that she shouldn't be ashamed of her own body, that she existed for more than just to serve men. There's so much more we can learn from Zetian, but her capacity for strength and love was unlike any I have read in fiction, especially YA. This is such a great book for high schoolers to read, so they can see real people loving each other in healthy ways, devoid of the drama that so often dominates this audience of literature.

Not that there wasn't any drama. Shimin was kinda hard to figure out, but give him time. Normally bad-boy tropes make me roll my eyes, but Shimin was just so raw and wretched. He has my whole heart. As for Yizhi, I loved him from the beginning. After the opening chapters, I was worried he wouldn't come back to the story, but I shouldn't have worried.

I've never read a story with a polyamorous relationship, either. It's been drilled into me that that sort of relationship paradigm is /wrong/, and it's something I've only in the past few years or so begun to take another look at and consider in my no longer conservative brain. This book took an approach to it that I'd never really considered, and cast it in a light that's so /human/. Yizhi's philosophy on love, and then the conversations they had about it ... they were the words that I'd known I believed in, but hadn't been able to articulate. I appreciate Zhao so much for bringing this story into the YA market. This is something a lot of people still feel very strongly opposed to, and I have a feeling she'll get some heat over it. But in words similar to how Yizhi put it, why spend precious time trying to restrict love instead of encouraging it to flourish everywhere it can?

This book is about love, and change, and standing up for yourself and your rights. It's also about so much more, but you'll just have to wait until September so you can go find out for yourself!