Initially I was intrigued by the beginning of the book, it was relatively fast-paced and the world was interesting. However by 25% in the pacing really slowed down and got very info dumpy. It really lost me in distinguishing itself from other Chinese mythology based books I've read, which is a shame because I think there was a lot of potential for this to be something unique.

Really it was reading so much like a YA version of The Poppy War that it was a bit jarring to me the amount of similarities. That's fine if you're looking for a YA TPW, but personally I am not.