The book is not being shy about the dark themes and topics it told us to deal with in the content notes. Which, again, makes me question the German marketing strategy painting this as your typical romantasy book (absolutely no shade if it was that), but that's a topic for another day.

So far, I do like the book and it has some beautiful worldbuilding. I also think that the writing style fits our protagonist, as she is just learning about the world she will now live in. Curious to see how it progresses and how she changes throughout the book!

the mixture of chinese names, weird chinese names, and non chinese names irked me. but i'm trying to convince myself it's an epic fantasy, not historical 😩

(i didn't want to be negative on someone else's post so i'm making a new one)

My brother Bao was still young enough to believe dead girls became kittens in their next life.

i know this is a fictional world that's only inspired by ancient china but good lord i had to take a moment when i saw this. there's no way any parent in ancient china would tell their kids this?? reincarnating as an animal is NOT a good sign in buddhism. there are so many videos of (chinese) buddhist monks caring for temple cats and telling them to earn more merits so they can reincarnate as a human in the next life because that's viewed as a better life than becoming a cat, even a spoiled temple cat.

also when i sent this quote to @lingsquared, she replied by telling me her dad used to tell her that "if you’re not this this you’ll reincarnate as a dog/cockroach" which is just FOUL LMAOOO i almost cried laughing