Reviews with content warning for Violence - El Bosque de las Mil Linternas

Where do I even begin? Okay first of all, portraying the country inspired by China as the oppressor of the country inspired by Japan was definitely a ... choice. The worldbuilding also felt superficial. It felt like what a westerner thinks ancient China would be like. Like a Chinese movie produced, written, directed, and acted in by exclusively white people. Which was frustrating because I believe the author is Chinese. I am also not a fan of how all the women were painted as essentially pickmes in varying degrees. Though for Lihua and Akira, it might just be Xifeng projecting, all of the women in this book will stop at nothing to get a man's approval, attention, and affection. There were women like Sun who mostly wanted the power that certain men's affections would bring, but the bottomline is the central theme of the book is how women struggle for a sliver of a man's attention and respect. Even Lihua who didn't really have feelings for Jun was so willing to cast aside a girl who she wanted to treat as her own daughter because she caught the attention of the emperor. It was so tiring to read, but I recognize that it can all be a representation of how women are expected to act and think in the real world. Also, in this world, everyone's names are drawn from the culture in which their lands were inspired by, like Xifeng is a Chinese name and Shiro is a Japanese name, so why WHY do we have a little girl named Jade, AN ENGLISH WORD. It was so jarring and I just really can't believe she was named Jade of all things. All these things really made a "not bad" story worse. One thing I can commend is, this was written beautifully, though it was mostly just fluff and repetitions and reiterations of things that were already said. Also, I don't think beautiful prose is even remotely enough to elevate a lackluster story at best into something better.

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lindadreams's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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katattack345's review against another edition

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I could not get into the story.
I usually love twists on fairy tales but this was not it. Nothing was captivating in it. Nothing hooked me in

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booksthatburn's review against another edition

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I know this is an anti-hero story, setting her up to be the villain of the sequel, but I detested the main character and just couldn't keep going. Her relationship with Wei feels built on nothing but having been near each other. They have no chemistry and it seems like they barely even talk. I like it when characters have good reasons to try and do a bad thing, but this seemed like she's determined to make terrible decisions in order to live up to what her abuser wants, knowing that Guma was abusive. I don't like any of it and I'm stopping.

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