I have thoughts... 

First of all, I feel bad, because this was a gift and I always try to finish those. I just had a very difficult time getting through this book because it's very heavy on the ya side of fantasy. 

I like the world, the concept of soulwalking is neat. The gods feel a tad generic but it's serviceable. But I love how nice the prose is, it salvages whatever is happening to the plot, at least a little bit. I also love the representation, especially the ace representation in our main character. There's a nice subplot of her figuring out what she wants. 

I am really frustrated with the plot and our main character, however. There are a lot of interesting plotpoints running at the same time but the unravelling of these points of intrigue loses steam midway through. It made it hard to become invested in the mystery and characters; it very heavily skews towards fantasy ya and a lot of the tropes that follow it. 

Probably would have been a 3-3,5⭐️ had I finished it; it's not bad just bland. 

I really wanted to like this book, and truly it's not bad but I had a hard time getting invested in the characters and story. That's why I'm dropping it. 

I like sci-fi, I like romance, but I don't think these aspects of the story lift each other up and the marketing was more focused on the romance which ended up taking a backseat to the sci-fi and mystery. 

I like Kiem's and Jainan's characterization and their dynamic is okay but seeing Kiem go out of his way for Jainan only for Jainan to read this as him causing trouble for Kiem was extremely frustrating. The world-building also just did not speak to me much and I had a hard time keeping track of all the important side characters. 

I am trying to annotate this book as a gift to a friend but annotating really isn't for me, I find. So it's taking super long. That's why I am now putting a pauze on this book and picking it up again later. 

100 pages in I realised that this mystery did not grip me at all. I had no interest in who the girl (found dead) is, who her killer is, the role of the characters in this mystery... For a thriller, that's a really bad sign. I'd rather invest my time in a book that's more interesting and I don't think I'll pick this book up again. 

The SA of the MC by his bully (Sean) and the overall way in which women and relationships between men and women were described was also disgusting. I'm so sick and tired of thrillers that objectify women and write about SA/inappropriate relationships without critical engagement. Yuck.