The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)

Lost the library hold for a bit but managed to get it again and finished. Such a fantastic book. All the characters are written so well I found myself so invested in their relationships and felt so much emotion for some of their betrayals and the world building is fantastic. I was really pulled in. While I usually listen to audiobooks on the go from place to place, this book had me laying in bed just listening for hours. Themes of power, ambition, and the stark reality of revolution tie so well with ideas of friendship, loyalty and hope. The book ended really well and is satisfying as a standalone book but once I realized it was a series I couldn't hold my excitement. Overall would definitely reccomend for fans of the genre.

I expected to enjoy this book more than I did. It started well, but somewhere in the middle I started to lose interest. I persevered with it and the ending picked up my interest again. It seemed a lot longer than 630 pages and it took me a lot longer to read than normal. Not sure if will bother with #2 when it is published.

This is a DNF for me at 30% for now. I'm not saying I will never try again, I might, but this is just not very fun.

I want to start out by saying this. I do not know about Chinese history. Some other reviews talk. either positively or negatively, about this basically being a retelling of Chinese history in a kind of fantastical way. They are probably right. But as that is not something I know about, I can't really offer an input on it, other than the fact that...
So far the fantasy elements don't seem to be worth it that much. Some gods show up, trying to subtly manipulate history through pushing their champions. They are messy, there are too many of them. It's just not that interesting in my opinion. It's just one more layer on top of my biggest issue with this.

My big issue, you ask? So much exposition!
I accept that the history of this world is rich. Hell yeah, it's obvious. But. Do we need to be told about all of that before we connect to anything at all? We don't know much about the main characters (more on that later), we don't know what the tone will be, what sort of a story we are reading. But we already got the names of the states, their capitals, their principal gods, a bunch of generals, heroes, people who even change their names once they become emperor. A bunch of conflicts, more new characters just mentioned.
Did we need that? Sure, add them when they become truly relevant, but we just bounce between literally everything, from the kind of funny, typical fold hero chapters of Kuni Garu, the revenge story flashbacks of Mata Zyndu's.... uncle, some minister, an accountant, some bandits, an old soldier, the gods, more and more and more. Every freaking chapter is a new tangent.
Again, all these could have been introduced, sure, go ahead. But be a bit more subtle than “OH, and this random side character tells you his story for no apparent reason” and much later, when we already get a feel for what is going on.

Now you might say, sure, history is an amalgamation of everyone's personal stories. Yes. But this is a novel. It needs to be at least somewhat of a consistent narrative that has a focus, or else it will be a jumble of parts that don't work together.
This one tries to do too many things and therefore it doesn't succeed at none of them.
Maybe Chinese historical storytelling works differently and tastes differ, but even considering that, this is a fantasy story with fantasy names and places, so you have to freaking learn them
regardless, which makes it cumbersome still.

Now... Kuni Garu is charming. If the book focused on him, it would be fun. But it doesn't and that kills it for me. Hearing about the 99th freaking person for one chapter doesn't add much context, more like it bogs it all down.
After some time I skimmed. I skimmed over names and the random useless information about whichever state has a mountain and whatever lake and then it all became even more boring.
Many minor characters seem to be added just to be added. Oh, they just show up, they have one scene where they do something, then they die/are gone. Why? Nothing seems to have that much of an emotional impact because, again, we are not allowed the time to get attached to anyone.
So it makes the story read more like a distant history than immediate events. Possibly the point, not very engaging as a book.

All in all, the book has a definitive character that really turned me off. All the choices made were ones that made it a harder, less pleasant read for me.

After reading the last few chapters, I was reminded of all the old anecdotes, stories we(the children of the 70's) had to brave (We had to study this again and again, from our primary schooling until our secondary, the product of two cultures, you had to study Filipino/English, and in the afternoon Chinese)through, This hero did that, this hero followed this greater hero, and was backstabbed, and so forth and so on, perhaps the best story to compare this to was The Three Kingdoms, Kuni Garu as Liu Bei, Mata Zyndu as Cao Cao, and Gin Mazoti as the genius strategist Sun Quan.

What made it different was the introduction of Gods which added some spice(only some, since there was no magic system), some ideas that could have made China into a powerful nation(I mean mechanical crubens or steel boats/submarines), kites and dirigibles.

Aside from that, this novel gave me the impression of a Westernized version of those old books we studied, the heroics, the double crossing, was it better, ummmm I would say not that much, I would have preferred more mystical abilities, this was man at his best and brutal at the same time. I am having second thoughts on finishing the series but as per my principle, once I start a series, I try to finish it, whether a trilogy, quadrology, quintology and so forth.