What a refreshing, gorgeous read this was. I came into this knowing it was written by a queer author (bonus points for being nonbinary) and nothing else and I had such a hard time putting this down. Seriously the only reason it "took so long" according to my read dates was because I was at a convention for a chunk of that time and couldn't read. This took everything I'm so used to in traditional fantasy stories and shattered it. That combined with vivid, yet concise prose made for an interesting read. I love the setting, the magic, the introduction of technology in that mix. I love that it's not another copy-paste of white, medieval Europe. I love the thought that was put into how the society approaches gender (which made me tear up, because damn, why can't our society do that????).

On the downside, I didn't realize this was a novella versus a novel, so it's really short in comparison to what I'm used to. I do prefer stories where you can sit in a scene long enough to simmer in it, so to speak, and while this story didn't really do that, I still felt like I got a good sense of the setting, characters, and so forth. The pacing worked well, even for something so short. If anything, it made me super curious for more!

Reading this was like downing a cold glass of water after spending months wandering a desert. Now I never want to venture out into that desert again. I can't wait to read the rest of this series and any other books by Yang.