↠ Content warnings: death, written depictions of dead bodies, child death, resurrection, murder, gore, cussing.
↠ Pages: 424
↠ My Rating: ★★★★☆


Thank you so much to Bookishfirst, and Inkyard Press for my physical arc copy. I am voluntarily leaving this review.

This book immediately interested me upon seeing the description on BookishFirst. I have never read Kylie Lee Baker before, nor asian fantasy (even though The Keeper of Night has been on my TBR for like 4 years now oops). But strangely enough, Wu Zetian and the Tang Dynasty and their ‘alchemists’ are a topic that have fascinated me as history buff for a long time. So seeing it in fiction had me HOOKED. And the author did a brilliant job satisfying the history buff part of me.

I thought this book was really good, not flawless, but exciting and interesting with a main character who is scarily clever and persistent. Zilan feels like she can keep up with all other character’s in the book, believably so. I loved her anger, I was sympathetic to it, I know that many called her unlikeable but I adored her. The girls no nonsense attitude made a LOT of sense based on the historically accurate treatment of the merchant class, and her struggle to survive. Of course she was rude, she often was in a more primal state where she didn’t know when her next meal would come. Manners are something only some people can afford to have, in Zilan’s own words. She was constantly in a state of trying to be taken advantage of and had to put her foot down to everyone before she even fully knew their intentions. Either they tried to take advantage of her or treated her badly for being a woman, being a hunxie, or being poor. She has to be one of my favorite female characters ever. Zilan’s sheer intelligence made me love the book, but then the author decides to just take away her intelligence for two scenes halfway through the book, I was so frustrated, it felt like it directly contracted all her character traits (including her paranoia and double checking) and her intellect. It came off like the author ripped it all away for a scene or two just to drive the plot forward, and I wasn’t a fan of that. And then her reaction:

There is some romance in this book as well, in regards to the prince, who seeks Zilan out initially for her powers. There is <b>NO spice</b> in this book, just basic kissing and innocent sort of fraternization. Which was cute. The prince, Li Hong, was very sweet - but I felt nothing for him as the romantic interest. Nor did I understand Zilan’s fascination with him. It developed way too fast, and was too one dimensional. It was too quick for the bare minimum info we had on the prince. He could completely be summed up as ‘cinnamon roll prince is the black sheep of his family, likes ducks, and mom wants to kill him.’ and this is the entire extent of his character. I hope the next book really expands on him despite his *ahem* predicament. 

There were so many twists, and twists rarely get me but these were very well done! It actually had me dropping my book and my jaw. The queen is FEARSOME, I was actively scared for Zilan and the prince because of how intelligent and capable she was. There is a dinner scene in this book that I won’t spoil, but had me SHOOK. She did, at times, have caricature-like attributes still. For all her imagination and wit, I hated how she had no active ability to manipulate Zilian without brutish force or threatening. She was way too clever for that, I thought at least there would be some level of manipulation that targeted Zilan’s lack of a mother figure, or that made Zilan doubt the prince’s version of things. And it never happened. This is why I gave it 4.0 stars instead of 5.

If you like:

♡ Dark Academia and Fantasy
♡ The Keeper Of Night
♡ Strong FMC’s who are angry at the world
♡ Capable villains
♡ Historical Fiction (with a lot of fantasy elements)