If I had to describe how I feel about this book with just 1 word it would be: indifferent 😐

I think everything about this book is very interesting and it genuinely had the potential to become a new favourite, but unfortunately something about the story just didn’t click with me. I reeeeally enjoyed the setup: poor girl studying hard to go to the most prestigious military academy in the empire and then going to war is genuinely a cool story (on paper lol). But I just didn’t care about most of what happened throughout.

I think my biggest problem is that I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of the characters. The SCs from the academy had the potential to be very interesting, but I don’t think we spent enough time with them for me to become attached to any of them. We just had the 2 bullies (Nezha and Venka) and the 1 decent character in the book (Kitay), and, honestly, if any of them died, I wouldn’t bat an eye. Jiang, the Lore Master, felt mostly like a plot device, and he worked great as such!!! But I just didn’t care about him *as a person*.

In the 2nd half of the book, when Rin joins the Cike assassins, she meets a whole new cast of characters, and they were all extremely forgettable, imo. The only one who was kind of developed was Altan, who Rin already knew from Sinegard, but I thought it was kind of strange that Rin said she loved him. Like, what?? Where did all that come from?? I understand looking up to him and such, but I didn’t understand *love*. Maybe it was just supposed to show Rin’s infatuation with the dude, though. Idk. I just didn’t care about their connection because, once again, I couldn’t bring myself to care much about any of the SCs. 🫤

I also didn’t care about the villains. At the academy there were the bullies and the classist teachers, which like, whatever. Then there was the Emperess, who we barely knew anything about. The enemies were just faceless people from the enemy empire. And I get that that’s how things are in war: the opponents don’t hate every citizen of Nikan individually, of course! It IS realistic to have faceless nameless antagonists! But it just made it hard for me to care about the enemies, you know? 😐 Overall, I just didn’t care about any of the side characters.

I do think Rin was an interesting MC! Her anger and desire for revenge were well built-up, and I enjoyed the progression of her character. With that said, if she died, I wouldn’t really care 😅.

Regarding the writing: this was quite an easy read; very approachable and easy to understand. With that said, the fact that y’all let RFK get away with publishing the line “Rin let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding” in an ADULT fantasy book published in 2019 is lowkey criminal. That is a 2008 fanfic line written by a 12 y/o, I’m sorryyyyyyyy. 😩😩😩

The audiobook was GREAT!!! Genuinely, I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed this book as much if it wasn’t for the incredible audiobook!

Other random things:

✘ Her 1st period being bloody enough to soak everything was just silly lmaoo
✘ The graphic contents weren’t as bad as I thought. Everyone talks about how graphic this book is (which is why I put it off for so many years) but it genuinely wasn’t that violent. If you know about the war crimes committed in eastern Asia in the last century, then this won’t be that difficult to stomach. We mostly just hear about it from other characters, so it’s not even a 1st person POV, for most of it. Though maybe I was just hyper mega prepared, since I’ve been considering reading this book and looking through its TWs for years.
✘ I considered continuing the series, since the audiobooks are easy to get through, and I didn’t dislike this book. However, this was such a disappointment that I don’t think I want to keep going… 😕 I really thought I would LOVE this series, since everyone talks about it so highly! I’m so bummed I didn’t love this that I don’t even want to think about it anymore. Nobody talk to me. I need to mourn. I’m just really really sad rn. 😔😔😔