This book just feels like it was a draft for a much bigger one. It's all surface level. It's hard to bond to any of the characters because they just float into the story with the expectation that I, as the reader, will care. Just because they're there.

This is a rich world with rich story to tell but it spends so long setting up this world that there's no room for the characters. I struggled to tell them apart, to figure out the culture, to figure out the goals, and mostly why they acted the way they did. It introduces so many concepts, so many characters, and so many intertwined histories.

In short, it would have done so well with 200 extra pages for me to digest and really dig into who and where and why. I'd have genuinely loved this if there had been space to properly build up the main character, and properly build a bond between the group. I'm honestly sad it's so short. It really makes it hard to digest and enjoy.