Meh. I should have given up on this one halfway through instead of suffering through to the end. I kept waiting and waiting for the author to reveal some reason for the vendettas between the characters, but he never did. The Italian-Renaissance-ish setting was somewhat interesting, but the jarring contrast with the Orphani who turned out to be biologically impossible chimaeras was just too much for my usual suspension of disbelief. And final plot twist about the King kidnapping and raping local women was just... ugh, really? Because making him some weird insane human-insect hybrid wasn't enough to signal how evil he was? And his henchmen just went along with this scheme... why, exactly? And our hero Lucien was somehow the first person in centuries to think there might be something the tiniest bit wrong with what was going on? I say again, meh.