A review by bananathemuffin
Descendant of the Crane by Joan He

3.0

This book should not have taken me a month to read. I just could not force myself to get through the first half of it at a reasonable pace. It was slow and honestly boring up until about the halfway point.

Overall it was okay. I found the murder mystery aspect of it to be interesting. And I have a weak spot for stories that include an ancient network of tunnels that comes into play later in the story. And this book has that so it made me happy.

I can tell I'm getting older because I roll my eyes every time I read that the general of the entire nation's military forces is only seventeen years old. I can deal with kings and queens being crowned in their teens, but who in their right mind leaves a nation's army in the hands of hormonal teenagers?

I also found the romance to be a bit forced. It seemed to come out of nowhere. Literally nowhere. Hesina just suddenly liked Akira and for seemingly no reason. I didn't feel anything towards their relationship. Normally I'm rooting the lovebirds on, but I was just "eh" towards it in this story.