There is a lot to unpack and I’m half asleep now so this will probably be disjointed

First I want to thank NetGalley for the ARC.


As I tend to do lately, I went into this story completely blind. I didn’t really know what to expect and I was blown away by the story. It had a vibe of Hunger Games, the sibling love, the fighting against unfair civilization, a defiant strong female lead. This story is not a hunger games clone just had some similar vibes and I loved it.


We follow Zetian as she volunteers to be a concubine pilot in hopes of matching with her sisters murderer so she can kill him for it. What starts as a tale of personal revenge becomes a full on take down the patriarchy tale, and one that I’m quite curious how it will expand in further installments.


There is a lot of beautiful imagery, amazing representation (particularly bi/Pan polyamory) and a lot of heart.


However, the reason this ended up being 3 stars is because a lot of the politics and war did not feel super well explained to me. I didn’t fully understand the purpose of the war, or how the qi worked etc. Some of this may actually have been due to my kindle version being terribly formatted that it was harder to read than it should’ve been. But there is a lot of war plot that frankly went over my head.


Despite my occasional confusion I do think this is a fantastic story and worth checking out