DNF @ 23%

Other exacerbating issues:

• Approximately 95,000 made up words, gods, and terms coming way too fast and thick. At a certain point, if you have to stop and infodump you have to stop and infodump, or contrive some reason for a character to have a conversation about the world's political structure or god pantheon, instead of constantly tossing out fake words and then giving parenthetical explanations. ("The Sulmere's roving bands of vigilante justicars, Jagaru wouldn't bother carting a Kentaro killer to a Dynasty prison." Like, BRUH.)

• Weird tone. Overall, the tone of the story is serious and more on the formal side. Then you'll have a character suddenly say, "What is her beef with that guy?" It's jarring.

• Some odd word usage: "Wetness played at Santu's lids, making his eyes twinkle." ← Pretty sure this is supposed to indicate being teary-eyed with distress. At one point "the man she loved" is used referring to the main character and her dead father. GIRL NO, don't say that about your dad!

• The narration is in third person, but the main character breaks in at least once every three paragraphs with italicized, first-person thoughts. I hate this. Commit to third person and actually do the work to convey your character's thoughts, or just write the book in first person. Half of these italic asides are pointless and could have been cut out completely, or just switched easily to third person to avoid the annoying POV break-ins.

• Unfortunately, I couldn't connect to the characters. If I could have, I probably would have loved the book and the rest of this would have been a mere side note. (I love The Goblin Emperor, after all, which shows that my issue with too many nonsense words is entirely situationally dependent.) Instead, Quen seems like a marionette, jerking back and forth with the semblance of agency and emotion, but it's just inauthentic and off-putting.