I kept wanting to like this book because there were some real nuggets of great storybuilding: a unique and well developed nature-based magic system, interesting post-colonial/anti-imperialist questions (

including the romance between a would-be emperor and anti-imperial nationalist

), beautiful imagery and settings (the temple and its shifting exterior, the lacquer gardens), etc. Unfortunately, every time I would start to come around on the story, something in the writing (repetitions after repetitions) or plotting (such a drag at the beginning and out of control at the end) would take me right out of it. For all its moments of beauty and creativity, this book had simply too many cliched plug-and-chug plot/literary tropes and far too many gaps of why we should even be rooting for what is billed as THE sapphic desi romance. Ultimately, this effort was unconvincing.