I made it through the first few chapters, and oh, my, god. I'm not forcing myself to finish anything this year and I already just absolutely hate this book, so I'm calling it a day. Every character has the dumbest possible names. Our main character is the most self-insert character I've ever read. The writing is shallow and repetitive. I will not be finishing this book anytime soon.

Really truly very good.

To be completely honest, I was expecting a little more rivers of blood (although boy did we get some blood river content) and a little (a lot) less 14th-century Italian politics but you know...write what you know, I guess.