Very slow moving in the first half, to the point that I felt bored and tempted to DNF. Much more enjoyable and fast paced in the last quarter or so. My biggest issue is that I found the plot very predictable and didn’t particularly like any of the characters. The world was lovely though. 

I quite liked this. I’ve read plenty of books with vampires, romantasy books, vampire romance books, etc but this surprised me in a few places. I appreciated the general setup as to why Kazan had to interact with a bunch of vampires without them immediately killing her, which was interesting, and the various threads of political intrigue. Every character is either morally grey or just generally bad, which was fun. I appreciate that I never really knew whether to trust any of the vampires (and several proved that correct) but I also loved Kazan just sort of floating through life lying about literally anything and everything, even for no reason, just to prevent anyone from ever getting to close to her. The ending was, to me, both frustrating and yet also really fit well with the book as a whole. Great vibes, fun read. I will say that despite the spice scene this really doesn’t have romance and it’d be disappointing if you went in looking for it; yes, there are bisexual vampires, sure, but there’s no development of a relationship, no feelings for one another, no love. Just vampires having a vampiric fun time.

Well. This was beautifully written and to some extent, I loved the format of dozens of mini stories with the same characters appearing over and over in different forms. But I was left questioning what the overall point the story was trying to make, in the end, in a story where the point really has to be central given the format. Was it anticapitalist? Pro resistance? (yes, but was that the point?) I don’t know. I just wish the last 10% even had been a tiny bit clearer, woven all of the various threads of the story together better. I also felt like it started to really drag around 70-90% of the way through, or maybe my faith in the idea that I’d stop being so confused and things would start to click just waned at that point. If it had been a little more unified this would have been a 5 star read for me. 

I think this is for fans of This is How You Lose the Time War (but without the love story), the humor of Harrow the Ninth (random memes mixed with shakespearean like prose, on occasion) but without the deep dive into the characters. I may like it more on reflection. I do think it’s smart and I don’t think it’s pretentious, though I could absolutely see why someone would feel that way. But I’m not sure it’s enjoyable.