This is an interesting story, very political, and I can certainly see how it greatly influenced other works that came after it. I did find some things really hard to appreciate. Firstly, and perhaps this is of its time, the villainous characters were really portrayed as evil through largely physical traits. Fatphobia, eunuch's, and pedophilia (though in a way which continually demonised the homosexuality and not the fact that they were minors as the issue) were used as ways to portray the character rather than their actions. I found that incredible uncreative and it frustrated me when so much attention was put into the creation of so many other characters. Secondly, the internal struggled the characters faced seemed to be very repetitive and never really reached a resolution. 

The audiobook version I listened to was atrociously performed. The accents were inconsistent from the narrator, and it jumped randomly between voice acting from American actors and the British narrator doing totally different characterisation. It made it really hard to connect with the story. Is the villain a bumbling wheezy idiot or are they a deep voiced conniving political mastermind? I think they should have either had it all acted or all narrated but not both, and the narrator needed to work out how he was playing different characters. There were also moments where it felt like the story skipped, but I have no idea if that is because it is an abridged version or not. It’s a good tale, but the voice acting really didn’t do it any favours.