I wish I could say I really loved this book (I was so excited to read something with a nonbinary main character!), but unfortunately I didn't. The premise was really strong, and I liked the characters quite a lot, but the book as it was felt distinctly under-edited. The plot was unsubtle and ended with a few unsatisfying and unresolved plot points, and the pacing felt strange. I liked the setting and adored the themes and relationship arcs, but it absolutely could have done with another 50-100 pages to flesh out what it was going for. The magic system and world building was interesting, and the prose was strong enough to keep me all the way to the end, but I couldn't help but want more.

I really, really wanted to be obsessed with this book! The concept was so exciting, the world and magic incredibly strong, and everything about it was wonderful... but I found that the characters being overwhelmingly real historical figures was off-putting. It held me back from getting really into the characters, and unfortunately made it glaringly obvious when a character was invented on top of the historical figures to make it so the entire cast wasn't men. It felt like the author was primarily interested in a couple of the historical figures and significantly less so with the others, and that harmed the balance. That said, it was a wildly entertaining read and I'm looking forward to reading the sequel!

Just a dash of lovely queer joy :) the concepts of the comics in this book are very simple, and none of it is especially 'deep'. It's politics and life that I've been living for a very long time, but that was part of what made it so wonderful to read - there was a distinct sense of being seen and understood through the pages of these comics, and I really adored that. This was really, really nice to read.

This book has ruined me, I will never stop thinking about it and everyone should read it.

Didn't finish this book because of the misogyny. It's pretty inherent in the genre, but it just dragged.