Maybe a little conflicted here. I went in cautiously pessimistic, so maybe that played a part in how much I ended up enjoying this. No expectations = good reading experience, apparently (not in all cases).

For such a short story, it packs quite a punch imo. The story of the Empress and Rabbit is shown to us in fragments of something larger, allowing my mind to fill in the spaces between them. I enjoyed the underlying story and the emotions and sentiments woven through it. There’s a deceptive depth to the whole thing.

I can’t really comment on the quality of the East-Southeast Asian influences or cultural nuances because I’m not knowledgeable enough there, so I’ll leave that discussion to others. But as someone going into this mostly for the storytelling itself, I did enjoy what the book was trying to do.

The prose is absolutely doing the heavy lifting here. If the writing style were any different, I think this would’ve been a much less effective story. But then again, isn’t choosing the exact right way to tell a story a skill in itself? The folktale-style narration, paired with the sparse, almost understated way information is revealed, worked incredibly well and left plenty of room for my imagination to take over. I kinda liked the abstractness of it 🙇🏻‍♀️

If I continue the series, I’ll probably do it in audio format. This feels like the kind of story that would be incredibly relaxing to have narrated to you.

This whole book felt like the Sanderlanche for the entire first arc of The Stormlight Archive.