M.L. Wang might become one of my favorites!! I just finished listening to the story, and she executed an AMAZING ending for this story!! That’s the first thing that stands out!!!
Some big picture positives: prominent female character as a lead, she grows more nuanced and interesting over time, she’s not a teenager, and I truly appreciated her journey at the end; great interpersonal dynamics between characters, and several side characters feel quite fleshed out; I’m not the biggest action buff, but I enjoyed many of the action beats in this story; great political landscape and world-building; she is so good at giving her characters quirks, qualities, and meaningful actions that make their personality and emotional/mental state clear; a “small story” in a big world—I love when authors can nail that vibe; finally, she wrote one of the best death scenes for a character that I’ve read, truly devastating.
Some potential areas of growth (from the perspective of a non-writer lol, so take with a grain of salt): the main father-figure has a significant character change near the end (maybe 70% of the way in? I’m horrible at estimating)—I could ALMOST completely buy into the change, but there were some elements of his development that just felt too quick to be believable, nonetheless I liked the growth he had; some of the dialogue was a bit rough at times (for example, characters repeated “what?!” too often for my liking—maybe an odd thing to notice, and maybe I noticed it more since I listened to the audiobook?, but it did stand out), and when it was a bit bumpy, it was kind of distracting; and, finally, there were 2 large “info-dump” sections (luckily, it was relatively interesting info, and listening to the audiobook prevented me from getting stuck in the weeds with it, but even listening to the audio, I felt sort of pulled out from the story).
Overall, a very enjoyable experience, and I’m excited to go read or listen to her newest release—Blood Over Bright Haven!