For fans of A Marvellous Light and The Hunter’s Gambit, this faux-historical fantasy is intriguing and absolutely dripping in blood.

Top Tropes:
• Your Problematic Fav 
• Toxic love triangle (will they or won’t they throuple?) 
• I can fix him daddy, no really I can 
• Eat the rich(‘s blood) 

I really enjoyed the depth of the exploration of the sibling relationship here, including the ways in which it was far from picture perfect. The author looks at the intersection between wealth and class, privilege and race, in an interesting and surprisingly thoughtful way. I appreciated the reform vs revolution conflict in the face of a tyrant, which is something I feel like many fantasy books leave out. All and all, a fairly action packed and interesting book. And that ending! Excited for book 2.

the thing is, strong doesn’t have to mean stubborn or bratty, and banter doesn’t have to be bickering. 

A strong character continues to fight in the face of adversity because it’s the right thing to do; a stubborn character fights all instruction, including actually good advice about how to survive or complete a task they need to complete, because someone else told them to do it. It’s not strong to fight tooth and nail against everything for absolutely no reason. (Also, an aside: liking pants as a female character doesn’t make you stronger than the women who wear skirts. that’s just internalized misogyny babes). 

Banter is witty back and forth between characters to build tension; bickering is when two characters fight over EVERYTHING for absolutely no reason and randomly inject sexual innuendo into every fight, even when it’s between two people with a wild power imbalance (say, a 1700 year old fae who can magically force people bonded to him to do whatever he says vs the dumbest 20something human in existence who spends all of her time flailing around ineffectually).

a really fun novella with a space heist, intrigue, and a touch of romantic interest. I loved Ada as a main character even if I feel like I really know so little about her. Obviously with a novella, you just accept that you won’t have a lot of answers but I felt like the author packed enough into the short space that I got the themes she was going for. Bit of a knives out vibe (not necessarily a compliment… I’ll have to wait until book 2 to see if it really is as clever as it thinks it is) but also I had a good time. Loved the mystery element, very interested to read book 2! 

I recieved a free copy of this book from the publisher. 

this is a spin-off of an existing series, which I didn’t realize before I picked it up. I actually think it can be read as a standalone as long as you are okay not knowing every detail of the backstory of some of the characters, as there is a bit of a catch up infodump in the first few chapters. 

as a spin-off, I found this to be fairly enjoyable YA fantasy. you have one FMC suffering from PTSD who experiences some predictable but genuine character growth throughout the book, a second FMC who knows she is doing awful things but does them for the sake of the greater good (and I am absolutely rooting for her), and lots of twists, turns, & betrayals. the romances follow familiar romantasy beats without a ton of new or unique elements, but they fit the overall story well & add more to the story than their predictability takes away. I do think there are a number of unanswered questions about the world & magic system but honestly I can’t judge that without having read the other series. 

is this a perfect book? no. am I absolutely going to read book 2 when it comes out? yup. I actually want to go back and read the first two books now to get a better understanding of the world.

better than I was expecting, worse than I might have hoped. This is a Mulan telling (this disney live action one) which asks the question, what if Mulan was driven by selfishness and ambition instead of duty. 

which... I guess? I don't know that it was actually successful in doing that since this Meilin is still motivated by a desire to protect her stepmother and sister (she just hates her dad now and her ambition is inconsistently written throughout. Is she actually ambitious or is she just falling under the influence of the jade pendant which she took before she even knew what it was? Plus, what is her ambition, just not to be prisoner in a woman’s life? It just doesn’t mesh with all of the inner monologue about greed & how much of an abomination she is. 

She's also constantly missing things and falling for every possible trick, but she's also 18. I think if you take this more as a YA novel (no I don't think that's how it's marketed but her character makes sense. The pacing is inconsistent and there are a number of things that make no sense (why is Meilin supposedly really great at Kung Fu but also spends half the book helpless?) but ultimately it's a decent, if unnecessary, retelling. 

 wish it had done a lot more with gender, if I’m honest. Just making a setting very misogynistic and then having the characters be misogynistic isn’t really commentary, in my mind. What was the message? #yesallmen? And how does the love triangle/ish plot line fall into that? I actually feel like if it ended right at the ending, no sequel, that would say quite a bit more but I dont think it is.