Poorly written, struggled to follow due to awful world building and none of the characters felt unique or interesting in any way .

This feels like the kind of fantasy books you'd read in the 80s. It reeks of orientalism, with shoddy writing and charactars to boot. The longer you read, the more it becomes an obvious self-insert and the more incomprehensible the plot becomes. I wanted to DNF at multiple points throughout the story but pushed myself through simply because it's a NetGalley.

I tried. I really tried to get past the first two chapters but they felt endless, I was thoroughly confused and grossed out by what I was reading and overall, it just didn't work for me. I found myself re-reading these two chapters on a loop because I couldn't understand what I was reading. Ultimately, combined with the controversy about the author, I'm happy to DNF this because it's a book I no longer wish to support.

I started this book with good intentions but ending up not being able to get into this the way I had hoped. Zabe Ellis is an amazing writer but this just wasn't for me. I hope you like this more than I did.

Hated this book. And its author. All of it bad.

The “Matriarchy”? Just patriarchy with a swapped letter

“Ambitious” world building? Skippable

Courtly intrigue? Weak and the dialogue is so badly written it hurts.

Too much info dumping and REALLY orientalist. Everything holding this book up felt so freaking shallow. The author tried for lyrical exposition but it ends up reading like terrible poetry. Is this what happens when you ignore your editor completely???

Don’t get me started on the author himself, insulting people who DARE to give it anything lower than 4 stars 🙄

Due to some very unfavorable portrayals in this book that I've learned from a trusted reviewer, I do not feel comfortable finishing this book.

This review is long overdue, I really needed to marinate in my thoughts before putting together the review. I DNF’d this book at the 20% mark. There were a lot of issues, right from the beginning, both in terms of world building and when it came to handling diversity in the book. This book relies heavily on the exploitation of orientalism; Asian motif’s and language are seen throughout the book in its basis and even in promotion kf the novel, its likness to Asian cultures used more so as an aesthetic than with respect to the fact these cultures belong to real-live people. This was present as well in the naming structure.

In terms of the books world building, there was way too much going on. We had dragons, dinosaurs and scifi technology elements which made the premise of the story hard to fathom. Way too much happens without the necessary foundational elements or world building in place.

I was really excited to read a novel with a focus on queerness and one with a matriarchy, something I’ve seen done beautifully in other novels and enjoyed, but the research on existing matriarchies (which are seen more often in non-western countries) was lacking and the representation felt hollow. There isn’t really a foundation of why the mattiarchy in this book is similar to the patriarchy in our world besides word-for-word copy and pasting rhetoric used against women flipped onto men. There seemed to be no foundation, at least from what I’ve read, where the power imbalance comes from— like we see in modern day patriarchal structures. It felt much more “women are mean to men too!!!”. You cannot simply copy/paste oppression without tweaking it past how it functions in our world. It reads as lazy and can be harmful. Unfortunately, when these concerns were brought up with the author after the books release, they doubled down. Refusing to take this criticism, Zabe instead told readers that we just can’t accept the fact women are abuse men too.

There was also some unfortunate TERF-like language and ideas embedded in the story, which was frustrating since the author himself is trans. I’m not sure if it is internalized misogyny or what, but it was nevertheless present. Example: the main character’s aunt transition from male to female and it is alluded to that they did so to get the perks of being a woman and the privilege that comes with in their society (TERF rhetoric).


Side note: I also didn’t appreciate the way sex work was portrayed or how often there were instances of dubcon. It felt like it was just shock value or trauma porn.

This was downright bad. That’s all I have to say. It dragged on forever and would not stop. I couldn’t find a plot for the life of me.

DNF @ 2%.

Due to controversy with the author and content of the book I have chosen to DNF. The 1 star is not reflective as I did not finish the book.

I cannot see myself writing a self-explanatory book about how "mean women" are to you and trans women are "evil social climbers" and then being told that "you're not smart enough to comprehend my intricate worldbuilding" in my mid-twenties.

DNF AFTER 2 PAGES!

The writing was terrible! I... I honestly had no idea what the hell was happening and even got my fiance to read it to make sure I wasn't losing it.
Listen, if the writing comprehension is so bad no one can follow, it isn't good!

This one's in desperate need of a back-to-the-drawing board edit. And a sensitivity read. Maybe it should've been left in the MS Word autosave library forever as a first attempt.

To enter in lightly: There was no clear thread of linguistic sense. It was as if Blair Waldorf herself was wandering the streets of a dystopian fantasy - no clear thread to modernity in any other sense.

To hit a bit heavier: the author is leaning on East Asian culture to worldbuild and for aesthetic.

Actually - why am I trying to be light on? This book has received a lot of backlash for it's misogyny, transphobia, and racism - all of which I feel is self explanatory and doesn't need to be unpacked for an upteenth time.

In a nutshell, it's horrible. This book has very little craft. It's a revenge dream and an ego trip. There is no consistency in the worldbuilding; it is simply a mash-up of everything cool the author could think of.

A DNF from me. I did try, as the premise was interesting - but the characterisation was confusing, the plot progression very odd and as it continued… unpleasant. Fantasy doesn’t mean badly researched or lacking human characters. Not for me.

I got so confused with all the names floating around that I think I spent most of the book thinking "Wait, who's this character again". Thought I'd need to keep a list of them on my phone with their description or such;

Unfortunately, that aspect took all of my concentration, which meant I wasn't able to enjoy the story in depth as I usually would.

Do yourselfs a favor and please do not read this book nor give this author more atenttion than they deserve.
Starting to read the book was really difficult, couldn´t get interested at all, considering I requested it because it sounded really intriguing it defintly was a surprise that I would become bored after a page or two, so I looked for it and some reviews to maybe find a reason of innterest that would make me read it, to my surprise I found that the author is a controversial person that has been critiziced and exposed many times in the past for how they write difficult topics as if there were nothing; even knowing these I decided to give the whole book another chance and the more I read the more I found that in fact every single delicate topic was being written as if there were nothing, not relevant and as if these topics didn't take lives every single day. For the record, changing the genders between the people doesn't give the story a feminist plot, talking about perpetuating prostituion of minors and "finding" empowerment through a scenario where they are defintly against it or where their opinion does not matter or if it is what they want to do or not doesn't make you a writter of the change damn it doesn't even expose the problematic, it just makes you part of the problem and part of the whole sistem you're "critizing". I always try to write my reviews thinking of the person behind the story and while I can understand this person and imagine what they had to go through I can't empathize with them on how they decided to write and how they decided to aproach the topics.

DNF. This book was rough. I started it and never could get into it. The writing was clunky and the world was confusing

DNF at Chapter 3.

The overt anti-sex work and lack of research on courtesans in history, the randomness of which things are named vaguely East Asian when not written by an Asian author, and vague politics that resemble a patriarchy but with women is just not the move.

"Kneeling and sucking doesn't require an advanced degree" like what is this????? The matriarchy and courtesans gives off the vibe of no research. Since the author seems to have been heavily inspired by east asian culture, they should have done more than the bare minimum when approaching the culture.

I couldn't finish it. The narration was confusing, I felt lost all the time, and the complicated names didn't make any sense either. The scenes changed from one to the other, the dialogues felt forced and unnatural, and I couldn't understand what was happening. The premise was excellent, intriguing even, but the execution wasn't what I was expecting.

This was such a cool, interesting premise, but in the end I was not able to jive with the writing and couldn’t get into the book.