The exposition is extremely heavy, and the plot lagged a lot. I liked the concept of the setting—a sort of steampunk boarding school. But I didn’t like how the world building was done. It was a bunch of info dumps through dialogue from classes, which felt lazy and like reading a history lesson. Which is fitting of the boarding school setting, but the author could’ve mixed in different ways to establish their setting.

I also didn’t get the point of Marta, who was an extremely frustrating character. She’s a in-between type, her racism and classicism not as overt as the boys who bully Anequs and Theod, which also serves in part of the critique against colonialism. But I didn’t get why she was constantly latching onto the friend group and still sitting with them at lunch when her bigotry still didn’t improve much over the course of the book.  I would’ve enjoyed it more if she wasn’t included into the friend group, though it seems like there’s possible hints of romance between her and Sander.