Reread this after listening to the audio drama.

In this novel, the two main characters are Guyun (general/marshal) and Chang Geng (son of the Emperor and a woman from the Hun tribes). Guyun is Chang Genge's foster father. China is fending off the Japanese, the English, and the Huns (mainly through war), and each of these kingdoms has their own steampunk technologies (very cool to read). This is a tale that focuses mainly on politics. The way the Japanese, the English (the Pope was in this novel!). The depiction of Huns was unfortunately very racist.

This is one of my guilty pleasure reads although I am critical of the Chinese imperialism, othering of non-Chinese, purity of bloodlines and very problematic and racist portrayals of Central Asians.

I did love the two leads though... and I loved the respective journeys each of them took. I especially loved how Chang Geng overcame the curse that plagued him. The curse could very easily be read as an allegory for severe childhood abuse, and I really did love the process of removing the curse: he would repeatedly revisit traumatic childhood scenes and in surviving them and returning to the present, he was no longer haunted by these terrible memories -- very like the somatic forms of therapy -- and he even remembered the better moments with his abusive mother, memories he previously had had no access to.

I loved also the huge change that Chang Geng underwent in this novel, marked by the change in his relationship with Guyun (beautifully captured in the different terms he addresses Guyun with, from 十六 to 义父 to 子熹). I loved that chapter, 'Ten Years'.