lyssical 's review for:

4.5
adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced
Loveable characters: Yes

God, Meatbun just knows how to hurt my feelings in the best ways. I was already crying like two or three chapters in. 

I really enjoyed the conclusion! It amazes me that even seven books in, there were still mysteries we were uncovering. I wasn’t a huge fan of
Mengze revealing themself as a man in disguise… we so rarely see powerful women in danmei. I was so hoping to see them on the throne at the end in their own right. There was no real plot line that made such a reveal important to the story. It just felt like an unnecessary afterthought.
 

I was surprised that the extras weren’t little vignettes but a little AU story. I think I might have preferred vignettes, but the story was cute anyway. 

Overall, I really enjoyed how the main story wrapped up—these characters are wonderful and their relationships just really made the entire story. I’m sad to read that Meatbun wasn’t totally satisfied with the end result. I can see areas where her ideas weren’t fully realized (due to stress and time constraints), but she does such a wonderful job of keeping to her overarching themes, and keeping her characters lovable. And that’s what I stay for, you know?