holy shit

Okay it's tomorrow now and I'm coherent. I've seen a couple people accuse this book of being unsubtle in a bad way and I don't agree. Kuang isn't subtle, that's true. But I think that's a strength of the book, not a weakness. For one thing, much more subtlety and a lot of the points would go right over some readers' heads. The core of this book, which is a wrestling math with colonialism and empire and the complicated everything about being a colonized person within the machinery of empire, is incredibly solid. Each of the characters has their own viewpoint and approach to things and they clash more and more frequently as the book gets more and more intense. This book conveyed the experience of being somewhere you both love and hate so well. In general? Fantastic book.