Huge shoutout to the friend who recommended this book so passionately that I finally picked it up after having it on my radar for years, because hooo boy it really gave me everything I could ever want and more!!! This is a slow, vivid epistolary fantasy focusing primarily on the relationship between our two protagonists and their experiences growing up together, with an emphasis on their growth, struggles for power, and romance rather than an intense plot or worldbuilding. 

This romance worked SO well for me. I loved the slow build of it, and while I often struggle with the idea of soulmates, Shefali and Shizuka's divine connection was not only completely believable but genuinely so beautiful. I am so obsessed with these two it's genuinely insane. In addition, I enjoyed the side-characters and really felt like they jumped right off of the page, be they allies of the girls or their enemies, I could always picture them well and was compelled by them! Especially their respective mothers--I loved that they're both so incredible and badass in different ways! The prose in this book is absolutely beautiful, too, with incredible descriptions of the natural world and the strange and magical happenings around these two women. I was just always drawn into the story, and I felt like the epistolary style worked well even in long chunks and never really took me out of the story. And the ending??? I had to go do something else instead of reading for a bit with like 20 pages to the end and it felt like I was being ripped away from a black hole, I was just so deeply invested in Shefali and Shizuka's story. I also loved both the court intrigue with the intense political back and forth and the bloody, brutal fight scenes!!! Both felt so deeply intense and just beautiful all the way throughout. This book just gave me everything I could possibly want with compelling, cutthroat protagonists, a slow, fleshed-out romance, and a shining fantasy world full of violence and strange magic. 

I can, like, intellectually understand people saying that the epistolary style took them out of the story, or that they wanted more concrete world building beyond just vibes, and the slow pace just didn't work for them--this book just had me hook, line, and sinker too much for me to worry about all that! I just had a great time personally, but I am inclined to love very descriptive, long, sapphic fantasy books.