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As a fantasy and Chinese history nerd, this book should have been tailor-made for me, but I almost raqe-quit at 150 pages. I kept reading primarily because having an unfinished book on my Kobo annoys me, and it ended up being entertaining enough to carry me to the end. It reads like my Chinese history textbooks but with occasional dialogue and some mega-narwhals. Lots of summary, very few women, not a lot of time getting to know the vast array of characters. The only characters I felt any emotion towards at all were Kuni (who I did genuinely root for) and Mata (who I wanted to die and disappear as soon as possible). If I'd felt closer to the characters, I might have better understood and forgiven the choices they made, but instead, it was 600 pages of terrible people being selfish and stupid. I acknowledge what the author was trying to do with this kind of format, where the reader sort of drifts over the action from birds-eye view rather than experiences it down in the trenches with the characters, but unfortunately it was 100% not my taste.