I found this book to be fast-paced with a perfect blend of action, fantasy, sci-fi, romance, and comedy. I listened to the audiobook and could not stop listening. I found myself going back multiple times to replay the action scenes or listen to the beautiful descriptors of the scenes, especially the outfits. I was able to visualize the book playing out so well it almost feels like a movie to me. The world was fantastical and larger than life but tackled some very real problems in our world today; gender inequality, discrimination based on sexual orientation, huge quality of life differences based on wealth, rape, and government propaganda and censorship.
Shimin's backstory was really interesting. Fighting in a ring to earn enough money to go to high school. Studying between fights and bringing up the whole class's grade point average. Zetian has a great point, though, the order of information received makes a big difference to current perception. Yizhi is beginning to think more highly of Shimin because he held him in low regard and now has this background information
I enjoyed some of the twists at the end. As we entered the final battle and the emperor class Hundun's "spoke" into their minds about humans being the scourge of the universe, I began to suspect that the human were the invaders but given it was so close to the end, I feel like it was still enough of a twist. I did not expect the gods to come pick up Shimin and address Zetian and try to coerce her with his life. I also enjoyed Yizhi stepping in to kill his father without pushing about the footage.
I'm looking forward to the next book in the series! Especially with the foreshadowing about Qin Zheng's power building back up.