the best part of this book was, by far, the explorations of the mcs' relationships with china and chinese culture. i thought they were all handled really well, esp w varying levels of connection. the little snippets of chinese texts and the descriptions of beijing were also really pleasant.

the discussion of colonialism and the cultural implications of art theft were definitely a highlight - i related heavily to a lot of the culture stuff, actually, so kudos for that.

unfortunately, that's about everything positive i can say about this book.

it started off great. it never really dragged per se, but about 30% in i'd already lost some interest. it doesn't rly live up to the thriller promise - the heists were over far too fast and weren't really written in a style that made me anticipate them.

another thing was the constant pov changes. we had 5 pov characters and 69 chapters - as you can guess, they switched around really fast. we never really got the opportunity to be in a character's head for more than a few minutes irl, and this also made some of the relationships confusing to sift through and remember.

i can see why people have issues with the ending, but overall i thought it was quite poignant.

tldr? interesting themes but somehow still boring. rip.

shoutout for the anki mention (loml <333) and the halsey lyric tho!