So, this book starts out in a terribly grim way. While it has many wholesome and lovely moments, it never stops being grim and on the edge. It's a magical, history and language lesson, through the eyes of minorities in an extremely oppressive country. The author tries really hard to represent the 1800s realistically but imo she fails to do so. Even the language people use doesn't represent the times. That's why she tells us right up front that this is a work of fiction, obviously so because people kill each other in this universe by throwing words at each other. It's kinda funny at times, to be honest. And I don't mind this universe being completely fictional, it's absolutely magical even with all the colonialism and slavery tugging at your conscience, the bigotry and rage inducing white supremacy constantly going against everything magical. Imo this book builds an amazing world on top of a close-to-real history. I hope it doesn't stop with the 1800s, I'd love to see language magic in different times and ages!

The fact that the author is a translator, extremely well versed in multiple languages makes this book a bit more enchanting imo. She looks into words, finds out their history, their origin, their translations to read a whole timeline of events that lead to the word's evolution. This aspect in on itself was magical enough for me. It's like real life sorcery!

4 stars because the ending wasn't satisfactory, it was grim, terrible, made me cry, but I wanted to know the aftermath (hopefully in a sequel!). And yes, the author fails to build a realistic world, and unfortunately her attempts at making it as realistic as possible dimishes the magical aspect of this world. Still great, just not a five stars.