Excellent and engaging novel

Before starting this book I’d read several reviews that were critical of the translation. I don’t read Chinese so that didn’t concern me too much.

What I found when I started reading was an interesting story with interesting characters. Like many of the Asian novel’s I’ve read, this one has a plethora of characters which can mean it’s difficult to identify and distinguish protagonist from antagonist sometimes. Each character has unique motivations and although some of the minor characters are somewhat cartoonish in nature, their actions all seem consistent with how they’re presented.

The story moved at a decent pace and although the end wasn’t exactly a cliffhanger, I’m still interested in reading the next book in the series.