Alright, so it was a very disappointing read. I was very excited to get into this universe, knowing nothing, it has literally all of my favorite things: epic fantasy, queer characters, dragons, political intrigue, etc. I felt like a child with keys jangling in front of my face, but alas, about 900 pages later I feel like i’m about 800 years older and for nothing. This took me about three months to finish, mostly because I just never felt like reading it.

I’m no stranger to epic fantasies, in fact I find my home in them, but this one was just kind of a mess? The structure and plot just felt like things just kept being added and added as they were being thought of (I imagine which is how we got to nearly 900 pages) and the world building was one of my least favorite I’ve read in a long time. And after reading that people have criticized the author for orientalism, I can see why.

This book has absolutely zero business being so long. For as long as it is, for as much supposedly happens, at past the 30% I personally found it becoming more and more boring. If you find yourself not liking this book early in your reading I highly encourage you to DNF 😭 This is entirely too long and not worth the time it takes to read. Taking a look through some other reviews to see people’s points of view on the story, I see this being a lot of people’s first dip into epic fantasy, and I just have to say - Please explore the genre more I promise there are so many titles that do this more succinctly and with a bit more thought.