I couldn't decide what to make of this in the first few hundred pages. Once I stopped thinking of it as a fantasy and starting thinking of it as a political story it increased my enjoyment immensely. Maybe that was obvious to most people, but for some reason I opened this believing it was fantasy (maybe the following books delve more into that?).

This is a generations-sweeping story of political intrigue that borrows heavily from Chinese history (the Han Dynasty, I believe). The characters are the winner here: fully fleshed out people who have histories and flaws and you come to care deeply for them and their relationships. Liu can write female characters well, which is a rarity in most fantasy I've read previously. 

I really can't wait to see where this goes from here, this first book was a banger.