A review by abirdiebooks
The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang

adventurous dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I feel like I just read 2.5 mostly finished books instead of one cohesive story. This could have benefited from M.L. Wang waiting to get a bit better at building a story and world, a few more rounds of editing and some thrown out plot points. This feels like it should have been somewhere in the middle drafting stages (storywise, mostly not writing wise) and not a finished product. It IS sad that we won't get more though. If this book had been worked on longer and published later and as part of a more cohesive series set up it could have been excellent.

Potential triggers:
The casual moments of domestic abuse, both in thought, conversations, and actions could have absolutely either disappeared or been handled differently. The mention but complete lack of real discussion regarding marital rape was just. No
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