There are so many things to like about this book. The writing is descriptive and rich. I loved the inclusion of storytelling in this book to enrich the world, as folklore is an important part of any culture, and including it here just makes the world seem even more complex.
I also like the fact that this is a villain origin story. I think I knew that when I first received the book from the quarterly literary box from page habit a few months back, but I'd forgotten it by the time I actually decided to pick it up a couple of days ago, so that is also a box checked off for me. I love fairy tale re-tellings and like the idea of an Evil Queen origin story.

Where I run into trouble with this book is with the character of Xifeng. There are some serious inconsistencies throughout this story with regards to Xifeng, starting with her relationship with Wei. The reader is told over and over again that Xifeng loves Wei, but in the same breath we are also told that she doesn't *love* love him and that she feels fully justified in scheming against him for her personal gain, no matter how much it may hurt him. And this is all supposedly BEFORE she breaks bad.

Also, her relationship with her aunt is highly toxic. She is beaten and berated her entire life while still being brought up believing that it is her destiny to ascend the throne and become empress. She is ruthlessly trained by her aunt to that end. When Wei, the only voice of reason in the whole mess, denounces her aunt's actions, Xifeng does nothing but defend her and continue to follow in the path that her aunt set her on from her infancy.

When it is revealed that her aunt is actually her mother, it made very little sense to me. Why pretend to be her aunt? It doesn't make her actions any less abusive. It felt like it was done for the sole purpose of having a twist in the story. It didn't shock me at all. It just made me more frustrated with Xifeng, who continues to allow herself to led by her mother and the Serpent King.

I also thought Xifeng came across as quite wishy washy throughout this book, but not really. I'm not sure if I can adequately articulate what I mean by that, but I'll try. A situation would arise that would present a dilemma to Xifeng. She would be presented with a choice. One way would be what a sane, feeling, non-sociopath would do. The other is what Xifeng would choose to do. She always chose the evil, the conniving, the manipulative, the selfish action. However, before making that choice she would fret as if she was actually experiencing some doubt. She would contemplate the repercussions of her decision and how it would affect those around her negatively. Then she'd make her choice, see the repercussions, and always have a twinge of regret before justifying herself by claiming that everything she was doing was in service of her destiny. I don't mind characters who are selfish, manipulative, and conniving. They can be super fun. But it felt like the author was trying to create an inner conflict to this character to make her more than just an evil sociopath, but it just didn't work for me. She never truly tried to change what she saw as being her fate. The phrase 'actions speak louder than words' comes to mind when I think about Xifeng. There wasn't really any inner conflict that felt authentic to me. Every choice she made was deliberate and exacting.

This all comes to a head when we learn

about the Serpent King and her Aunt/Mother. Her mother tells her that this evil spirit manipulated her for years up to the point where she found herself with a child and no one to help her. She says she burned everything he gave her, but then still practiced the magic he'd taught her, the magic that told her that Xifeng would be Empress someday. Wouldn't it occur to her even once that maybe the magic itself was tainted being that it came from such a dark source? I don't understand why she would continue to use it and why she would teach it to Xifeng. It makes no sense. Also, this scene really angered me because we have her mother claiming that she loved her to the point that she would rather die than subject her to such evil, but this same woman then spent the next several years physically and emotionally abusing her continuously. Again, we are being told one thing but shown something completely different.

Then, we come to my biggest issue. Xifeng has no agency.

When she finally learns that the Serpent King never did leave her mother and has been guiding her actions since the beginning, and also that the Serpent King is who she's had within her this entire time, she says to Kang, "I told Guma he might be controlling her...controlling me and my destiny all along."

To that, Kang responds, " But you made the choices to get there. You did what it took to get yourself to the palace, to defeat your enemies, to put yourself before Emperor Jun. Your own two feet walked that dark road, as the Serpent God hoped they would."

This sentence feels like an attempt by the author to establish that Xifeng actually has free will. In her annotations for this book she never once intimates that Xifeng isn't making these choices on her own. She celebrates Xifeng's path to darkness.

But later on the same page, Kang asserts that becoming Empress is her destiny, saying, "This is what your clumsy mother tried to engineer, believing it to be her own wish."

So...Xifeng isn't being manipulated by the Serpent God and totally has free will to make all of her choices...but her mother was a clumsy simpleton who is a puppet of the Serpent God...You can't have it both ways!!! Of COURSE the Serpent God is manipulating Xifeng. It should be obvious to every reader. But it's not obvious to Xifeng. She has had any sense of free will stolen from her, and is now a pawn of the Serpent God. Having a being who is obviously in his control telling Xifeng that she has free will doesn't make it true! All that being said, she is doing none of this of her own free will. This Serpent God has been inside of her since the beginning of the story, guiding her actions, taking away her free will. Taking away any agency she may have had. I could've enjoyed a story about a conflicted but ultimately ruthless female protagonist, but I don't like that, at the end of the day, she is just the pawn of some man and his evil quest for power. I can't believe so many people see Xifeng as a strong character. She is being fully controlled by pure evil!

I guess at the end of the day, I'm confused about the aim of this book. Are we supposed to see Xifeng as a strong, femenist, bad-ass bitch? Because I definitely don't. She thinks that she is the one manipulating people and situations, and she is, but she is also a victim of that herself. Are we supposed to see her as a victim? I don't get that sense when I read the annotations by the author in the page habit edition of the book.

Even with all of the negative things I've talked about here, I still enjoyed most of my experience reading/listening to this book. I am intrigued enough to continue with the next in the series. I want to see how this is all going to end up.