Reviews

The Sino - Vietnamese culture set in space!
The concept of overlays and poetry as political speak!
The (unexplained) references to Romance of the Three Kingdoms and other Sino-Vietnamese mythologies and literature, forcing readers unfamiliar to look them up themselves and to learn!
De Bodard's trust in readers to get her world, she throws you off the deep end and immerses you QUICKLY into her Xuya world. Thank you for the trust, it was a very refreshing change to the usual "main character as an audience surrogate asking questions to another character as a way for the author to info dump about their world" trope.
It took me about a third of the way to really get into the book but once in, I was HOOKED.

Things I did not love:

This was my first foray into the Xuya Universe by Aliette de Bodard so perhaps this was my own fault but I could not figure out the concept of time? And this hindered my belief in the VERY quick romance between
Quynh and Hoa
... I could not for the life of me figure out if things were moving quickly or if it had been a week / month already since their first meeting.
I also didn't love that
Hoa is Quynh's mentor's younger sister
and they fell instantly in love ?
The time thing also hindered my belief in the whole revenge plot too, it felt VERY FAST and I wasn't sure if it was meant to, especially with this book being marketed as being a Monte Cristo / Nirvana in Fire in space. Both HEFTY works.
The ending came on fast, and I was disappointed with the choices of one character though I guess there were (weak) foreshadowing points throughout the book. Spoilers below: I felt a bit weird with
Minh choosing, after deciding she wouldn't follow her mother's orders any longer, of all things, to be a mother???? I suspect this has my own biases playing into it as I suppose motherhood in a matriarchal society would likely be a better experience than in our own world. But it strikes me as very odd she wouldn't choose to just live for herself and explore for a while first? We see an ending with her pregnant with a mindship.
I felt like while de Bodard trusts her readers to understand her world building, she should have extended the trust into reading and understanding her character's feelings. Often she was narrating out what felt to me like obvious motivations for a character that did not need to be spelled out.

Overall I did enjoy this book and had a good time with it!

Content Warnings