1.5. *sigh* The naivete of Ying was a lot to be asked to put up with and then the way the beginning was rewritten by the end. Like. Ying reframes her falling for the mirror Prince as her really falling for the actual Prince who didn't seem to want her but no. No. Because they'd had one (maybe two?) actual exchanges by that point, which was unkind so... that's not actually what happened. You just know it's been, like, 200 pages since then and maybe I'll just go with it. But I won't, because it's a lie.

There were some promising bits to this but they didn't go anywhere because the only thing the storytelling seemed wholly committed to was the romance, and that was super, duper bad.