4 stars

Honestly, going into Empress of All Seasons I expected another mediocre YA fantasy and that was exactly what I got – for the most part.

The book adheres to a lot of genre tropes. Of course there is the typical enslaved race that has some kind of special powers/ are magicians/ completely overpowered but still managed to get enslaved/ whatever, and the main character is one of them who also falls in love with the son of the ruler of the oppressing race. Throw in some sort of competition, a romance that has to have some dumb and forced misunderstanding in order to add conflict and artificially bloat up the story and a twist villain that is revealed in the third act (and that is pretty obvious already early on, at the latest at the moment when

Spoiler

Satoshi enters Mari's rooms to talk to Sei. Honestly, with the way Umiko and Euko's story went, I thought that this was heading in a different, even darker direction. Oh well, I'm glad that I didn't have to read another gratuitous rape scene as I've had my fill of it after Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House

and you get the first three quarters of exactly that: generic YA. Credit where credit is due, though, the setting is nice and a welcome change of pace from the usual medieval YA setting most white authors prefer.

Also, the challenges in the seasons felt way too easy, although I’m not sure either how the author could have made them more impactful. And all of the characters deaths felt hollow

Spoiler

and there were quite a few. But I didn’t feel moved by Asami's or Nori's or Taro's or Mari's mother's or best friend's death. Ah well, I guess I’ll have to read Hunger Games again to check that I’m not just secretly dead inside

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I even expected a

Spoiler

happy ending for Mari and Taro. Thank good that there wasn’t, because I would have been really frustrated. Taro irredemably blew his chances (and any sympathy I had for him) when he revealed himself to be a racist (against yokai obviously) and also a lunatic/ maniac

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So, why did I change my mind?

Well, without spoiling too much: The ending was refreshingly different, especially the lore about the gods which I absolutely loved.
Other than that, the book’s well executed, the pacing is well done and the writing is nice. Concerning the latter, I have a small nitpick though: for whatever reason the author seems to dislike pronouns and excessively uses the character’s names, which only really became apparent to me in the last third. Don’t believe me? Here are two examples (not my best, but at least they don’t spoil anything major):

"Akira grunted as a passerby rammed into his shoulder. Seeing Akira’s samurai dress, the man muttered a hasty apology.
Akira scanned the throng."

And

"Yuka began to run, baby tucked in her arms. She leaped, tossing Mayumi in the air. The baby giggled, somersaulting through the sky. Yuka transformed into her beast. Just as Mayumi was about to hit the ground, Yuka grabbed her daughter."

See where I’m coming from?

Tl;Dr: Although it‘s not a must-read, Empress of All Seasons doesn’t fail to entertain by being a fast, enjoyable read without the trite and hollow kind of ending that seems to be the genre standard. I enjoyed it very much and it was exactly what I needed to get me out of my reading slump!