2.5 stars rounded down.

Man this was a disappointing read. It had a strong start, but nosedived HARD. A lot of the time it felt like this book did not know whether it wanted to be YA or adult fiction, and I don't mean that in a 'it's so mature' kind of way.

THE CHARACTERS:
- Li Hong was just like. Fine. He's a himbo that's not entirely terrible, can't go wrong there I guess.

- Zilan... lord do I have opinions on her. I understand that she's 17 and stupid, but it became increasingly clear that the author (and a lot of the reviewers) genuinely think she's cool? Zilan is highly illogical, extremely reactive, and downright mean and irresponsible most of the time. It is incredibly hard to root for her because she's just not someone that's worthy of success.

- I could not get behind the romance. Zilan's a bitch for 90% of it, then they're suddenly deeply in love. Okay. Whatever, teenagers I guess.

- Zilan stumbles and deus ex machina's her way into every single success. She never really shows herself as a keen person that has much consideration for others, even when she's trying to help, because she will do absolutely insane shit like openly suggest committing treason and then wishing her cousins were dead because they're (rightfully) afraid for their life considering THE MURDEROUS EMPRESS' GUARDS ARE RIGHT THERE.

- Zilan is SUCH a snowflake it's so bad oh my god. If you're going to give your character main character syndrome where they are the one that rises above their circumstances/makes The Big Change, give us a reason to believe in that! Zilan only succeeds because of ridiculous and often unexplained deus ex machinas. She keeps openly trying to discuss murdering the empress with the other alchemists, who rightfully tell her to shut the hell up, only for her to start screaming and crying about how everyone is spineless or whatever. Girl shut up you are seventeen and useless!

- I honestly wouldn't have minded her being such a terrible person if it weren't super obvious from the get go that we are meant to think she's like, cool and stand out? But she just read like a brat. She would constantly do things that could endanger herself and/or others then get mad when people tell her to think... like, that's not charming girl!

- I have no opinions on the other characters because who cares, they don't have much of a personality. The empress is based on a real historical figure except make her evil because Reasons. This is such a feminist girlboss book where every single woman is either evil or stupid.

THE PLOT:
- I liked the bones of the worldbuilding and there's definitely a strong foundation here, however its best qualities are pretty heavily neglected in favour of a lot of drama where it's basically just Zilan bitching about something/someone or failing her way into progress.

- The alchemy isn't actually present for like. Most of the book. Don't read this if you're actually hoping to read a high fantasy book. I liked the set-up and actually don't mind its relative vagueness, however, Zilan heavily suffers from protagonist syndrome where she's Just The Best at everything because Reasons.

- The plot was mediocre but passable. Like, it could be worse. I was personally hoping for a more epic conflict and I did get that for the first 15% or so, I actually did quite enjoy hearing about Zilan fighting against the odds of the trials creatively... then after that it was a whole lot of filler.

THE WRITING:
- It's fine. It's passable YA writing, not much to say here positively or negatively, which is honestly better than I can say about a lot of books so I'll give it that.

- I think being in Zilan's head was a bad choice. She's deeply unlikeable and her selfishness makes most of the characters background noise because she just doesn't really care about anyone like that (although she sure claims to).

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Ultimately this was a deeply disappointing read. The ending just made me feel like I was treated like I was an idiot, and so I have no real interest in reading the sequel.

A big problem here, which we see in many other books that people would call 'feminist', is that while our protagonist rallies against a patriarchal, oppressive society, because the author doesn't want to spend too much time on men that aren't the love interest, and he obviously can't be irredeemably bad, the rage our protagonist has against him just feels entirely unjustified. I do not root for them together because she treats him so poorly that it's embarrassing. Also, while not unrealistic, the 17 year old fake concubine plotline just feels kind of cringe.

I wish authors pushed harder on actually being consistent with the characters' struggles. And I also wish that plots like these, which are very clearly served better by changing the book to an adult-focused fantasy, weren't so dependent on somehow staying relatable to a teenage audience. This plot was not intended for a 17 year old protagonist, and that becomes very clear once you start reading it.

Maybe one day Asian (YA) fantasy will stop disappointing me with its lack of teeth.