I enjoyed this, but it was a bit darker and more brutal than I was wanting/expecting. Think I was more interested in the first quarter or so more - while Zhu Chongba was a monk in training at the monastery. The military parts of the book didn't feel as fleshed out to me, and sort of lost me at times. The book also switches the narration after leaving the monastery and changes to a multi-point-of-view structure. But the other viewpoints - Ma, Ouyang, Esen - are needed by that point because I started wondering if I should still be rooting for Zhu Congba. But even if they're morally grey and do terrible things, at least the characters are definitely interesting and compelling. There's some good stuff in here about gender, identity, and belonging. I'll say I didn’t really get the supernatural/fantasty elements in the book. Those bits are so small that it felt way more like a historical retelling to me, and I kind of would have preferred it without those elements.