One thing I sure don't miss about Twitter is the constant cycle of outrage. It was exhausting, even if you weren't participating in it! 

Yes, this novel is positioned as a skewering of publishing, and oh my, it is that! But it's also a skewering of our tendency toward jumping to judgment, group-think, and performative outrage on the internet when any type of literary scandal breaks. 

Here, though, we have a legit literary scandal. So maybe the performative outrage is justified. But only Juniper knows the truth. What if she HAD been innocent? Aren't we supposed to take writers at their word? But she lied -- we know she lied, she knows she lied, but no one else does. 

That's the genius of this book -- its "layers" are designed to make readers uncomfortable. I absolutely inhaled this book -- and it's probably a good thing, 'cause it would've made me deeply uncomfortable if I'd stopped to think too long. 

I'd even start to sympathize with Juniper, who did an absolutely unforgivably terrible thing. But does she deserve death threats? Of course not. Does our sympathy for her receiving death threats start to spill over into, hmm, maybe she's not so bad? She's just a writer trying to push the rock uphill in the crazy world of publishing? Maybe her justifications for doing what she did make a little sense?  

But, wait! No! She did an absolutely unforgivably terrible thing. 

This was such a fun read -- a book fascinating to engage with and play "what if"...

This is my first time reading Kuang, and even though I'm not a huge fantasy fan, she's such an astute and engaging writer, I'm definitely interested in trying her other work.