4.5

"You're my person. If you so much as gasp for breath, you'll hear about it from me. Bear that in mind."

dude. seriously. that was so great in so many ways. priest is an excellent author, capable of creating several situations where the readers would just find themselves unable to breathe until it was over, and the characters are so compelling and charming; ESPECIALLY CHARMING, AND ESPECIALLY FEI DU. i'm absolutely in love with fei du. he's such a wonderful character, so full of personality and life and everything. i'm also very much in love with luo wenzhou, my darling, my baby. i must say i truly, from the bottom of my heart, love them very much. they're brilliant together, and they're brilliant apart. it took me FOREVER to finish reading this, but that's on me and the fact that i'm too slow to properly comprehend some of the bits of this novel. the reason why i decided to give it four and a half stars instead of five talks mostly about how confused i felt here and there, especially during the most important investigations and intrigues. it was a delightful read, though. i'm hoping to have them with me in my heart for the longest time.