I really wanted to like this book, especially because it decenters the West. It’s not good. Grossly overrated. Too preoccupied with over-explaining its own logic. I had to drag myself over the finish line.

The book reads like it was written to be adapted on screen. The pacing is strange (in reviewing book 2, someone else wrote that either nothing much happens, then 20 different things happen in a short space of time, and that there’s no in between…in this book the dial is almost always turned up to 100. Everything’s in constant motion everywhere, all at once, like the book is afraid of losing our attention). There’s too much telling, not enough showing. It’s too bombastic. Every minute. This makes the stakes in the book feel less consequential. You’re told to be shocked, distraught, titillated. It insists upon itself and it reads like middling fanfiction. And the infernal trials… I’ve never read a book in which character deaths were conveyed like a rote assemblage of facts: “he looked into my eyes one last time, his body went limp, I screamed in agony” kind of energy. It’s so unmoving and emotionally flat. This is what stirs people emotionally?? The political intrigue that everyone found so engaging didn’t pique my interest either. Everything was conveyed with blunt, blundering force. The different kingdoms indexing different political and economic systems, like capitalism, socialism, communism, had the potential to be interesting, but the book suffers from writing that reads like a compendium of logistics: “this happened here and at this time, and that’s who it happened to, and this emotion was expressed in this way, and this magical object that just impaled me will have this kind of effect, and he’s this kind of person, and this creature is x and y and z, and I raged, and I screamed, and I squirmed and then I laughed maniacally and then I finally broke down into tears” ???

It’s fine to enjoy any kind of book, including mainstream BookTok fare, but these are the kinds of bloated stories that make money these days. No one cares about editing or quality anymore.

Let’s have stories like this that are better written. Please, for the love of god. Also, it’s the most unsatisfying slow burn I’ve ever read. Will not be reading book 2.

Good storytelling requires more work, finesse, and style. Good vocabulary/diction is not enough. Writing a lot is not enough. I believe in and want better for writers and readers, even those who just want to have fun with their stories ♥️