This book is difficult to review because I feel very differently about the first hundred pages compared to what follows.

Part 1 of the book is painfully slow. Almost nothing happens in the main plot, and even the nothing that is happening feels disjointed and unimportant, constantly glossed over with time skips or interjected with short chapters of (for now) completely unrelated snapshots of things happening elsewhere. Rather than break up the tedium they just made the nothing drag on. This author desperately needs to learn better pacing.

Parts 2-5 I thoroughly enjoyed. All those unrelated snapshots finally pulled together, the pacing picked up, and I happily read the last 200 pages in a single sitting. I am a sucker for good world building, and this was excellent, though darker than I expected. That said, it wasn't the book I thought it was when I picked it up. I was expecting a sort of Theseus-descending-into-Hades adventure which it very much was not.

[Spoiler-light thoughts on the conclusion]

There were a couple unanswered questions throughout the story that I kept feeling would be ruined by almost any answer we were given, and I was pleasantly surprised that they were left as questions. Similarly, I was pleasantly surprised the will-they-won't-they romantic subplot didn't magically end up with a happily-ever-after that would have strained my suspension of disbelief.

In the end, I really enjoyed the 240-page story that started at Part 2. Do I think reading the first 100 pages to get there is worth it? I don't know.