This was a journey! I didn't expect it to remind me so much of Arrows of the Queen, but there are so many parallels that I kept noticing. I'm not going to go into great detail about it, but one major thing I noticed that is consistent across both are pacing and passage of time issues. This book especially suffered from pacing issues. It was dense at times and took me way longer to read it than it should have.
It was like-- slow slow slow- hey, four years has passed- slow slow slow- by the way, six years has passed!- then it got really fast all of a sudden. It was very detailed, and while I didn't oppose such detail, it did not help the pacing problems at all. Someone might disagree with me on this, but this was my experience.
That being said, I did enjoy this book for the most part. There is some really interesting worldbuilding, and the characters are pretty cool, although you might have to suspend your disbelief a few times in regards to the main character. The main topic of this book is animals, and animal interactions with humans, how humans cage and try to tame animals at the cost of their nature. It brings up the moral debate about whether animals should be manipulated by humans, and the subject of human nature vs. animal nature. I found it to be quite interesting.