From what I'd heard about this book I was expecting it to be about an intelligent woman manipulating powerful men to achieve her own goals, but so far it seems to be heading in a very "girlboss liberal feminist" direction. Mara's main goal at this point is exclusively to perserve her family's honour and she doesn't seem to be bothered about much else, including the lives of her family's literal slaves. The line about her "being equal to men" because of her new station was unpleasant, especially since it showed just how much she buys into her world's sexist views. I understand that the book was written when liberal feminism was very much the common wave of thought and I can't expect it to follow modern feminist theory, but I'm just not very interested in reading a book about a woman upholding brutal systems of oppression and inequality for her own personal benefit. Plus her character is not only single-minded in her obsession with her family's legacy and honour, but also not particularly compelling or interesting to make up for it, since I don't give a whit about her slave-owning family's legacy.

Additionally, I was very put off by the first mention of slaves, but I ignored it with the hope that the book would better address it later. Unfortunately, that seems quite unlikely. Most of the (plentiful) mentions of slavery are completely glossed over and ignored, except for when Mara talks about how hot the enslaved labourers she gawked at were... it was incredibly offputting and she seems to have absolutely no empathy whatsoever for them or any interest in helping them. When her family's slave tries to off himself over an elitist bullshit rule, Mara is only bothered about how his loss would affect her. She pats herself quite nicely on the back for coming up with the solution that she can just tell him to kill himself as soon as he outlives his usefulness to her, and this is not only accepted by the other characters, it was all but praised. That scene was utterly unbearable to read. While I don't think the book has to be completely about slavery or that the authors are terrible for including slavery in their world or anything, I just really don't want to read about a world and character who wholeheartedly believe that these systems of oppression and cruelty are not only justified, but the natural order of the universe.

I am very interested in the plot from the blurb and I really do want to enjoy this book, I'll probably give the book a few more chapters, but I really don't see these issues improving so unless the plot really sucks me in or there's some radical shift in Mara's opinions/character there's a good chance I'll dnf.