➤ I had a really hard time getting into this book. It took me over a week just to read the first 30% of the book. I then switched to the audiobook, even though I didn’t like the narrator, just so I could finish this damn thing.

➤ The plot was interesting *on paper*: a murder mystery in a sci-fi setting? Sign me up! However, the plot moved soooooo slowly! Literally NOTHING happened for most of the book, and even when the story started moving it was still not that interesting. I just found this book painfully uninteresting. 😕

➤ The climax of the story was BORING as hell lmao.

Mahit found out the Teixcalaanli emperor wanted to invade Lsel (where she’s from), and Yskandr (the previous ambassador)’s death was ~very convenient~ (if he died he couldn’t keep the peace between Teixcalaan and Lsel). She warned Lsel about Teixcalaan’s invasion plans. People at Lsel tell her about some other invaders and Mahit just tells the Teixcalaanli emperor like “Yeah dude, you should fight these other invaders instead of annexing my station!” and that’s it.

😐😐😐😐😐😐😐 So dull, so obvious, so easy, so anticlimactic… Why did I read all this for???

➤ The writing was a little confusing. There were A LOT of “asides” in the middle of sentences (in between em dashes), but these were so long that it became difficult to remember how the original sentence even started, because at that point we had had 4 lines of unrelated and UNNECESSARY stuff in between those em dashes lol.

➤ The world was interesting and rich. I especially liked the focus of the nuances of languages, ways to address people, customs, traditions and gestures. With that said, it kind of feels like a waste to have this expansive and interesting world and do so little with it. This book takes place in one city (that we barely see) during like 1 week. It could honestly take place anywhere. The setting was mostly irrelevant, tbh.

 

➤ Mahit was a bad MC. She is literally in danger of being murdered but honestly she doesn’t seem to care that much. 🙄 She is supposed to be knowledgeable on the Teixcalaanli Empire (since she’s literally an ambassador) yet doesn’t even know how the emperor gets heirs. The author sometimes made her dumb just for the sake of getting that information conveniently told to the reader. 🙄 Like, this bitch literally tells Teixcalaan about Lsel’s very secret technological advancements on HER FIRST DAY THERE!!!! 🙄 It takes her 70% of the book to think about putting Yskandr’s imago in her brain, so she could access his memories (which was literally my first thought, from chapter 1 lol)… 🙄🙄🙄 <b>Mahit is STUPID, and it makes NO SENSE that she’d be chosen to be an ambassador between 2 warring nations.</b> Byeeee.