I think this falls into that YA pitfall of basing the story and characters around conveying a certain idea out of resentment and a sense of superiority from the author rather than any actual theme, message, or question/exploration. In this case it felt a lot like the author wanted to convey the idea of how terribly misogynistic patriarchal society is through a "unique" amalgamated setting (that was just a slapdash attempt at an actual empire built on digital voyeurism at constant war with pathetically weak explorations of how that society is held together or what kinds of people actually inhabit it) and a "power fantasy" female lead that just fell into shallow literary shortcuts instead of building her relationships with her country and friends in the text :/

The "feminist" bend of the story was incredibly shallow and underbaked, with no actual struggle to connect with other female characters inner worlds and instead focusing on how self aware and special Zetian is for somehow being the only woman to notice how unequal her society is with little build up/development of her politics. She wants to somehow liberate girls without ever having talked to any of them shes trying to "save" and she doesnt think any deeper about how they might be fighting back or attempt any form of collective liberation :/

Also the romance was hinging more on the "scandalous" polyamory of itself rather than any deeper developements of each characters' personalities and values and how they all navigated that when trapped in the confines of cisheterosexual relationship standards :/

Very disappointed but i already kinda got that vibe based on how it was advertised :( but i was hoping for a lot more from this new generation of YA scifi :(

There was just this weird overall tone in the story about how all encompassing patriarchy was in society, which it is ofc, but without the realistic complex collective resistances that wouldve emerged in those conditions. It barely explored the potentials of communications technology or the overall infrastructure and cultures of its "chinese inspired scifi setting" and instead resorted to shallow individualist "strong female lead" with underdeveloped values in favor of showing the people in charge who's boss........somehow....