The Red Scholar's Wake

I was really looking forward to this one, so it's sad that I ended up not liking it. The worldbuilding was interesting, if sometimes confusing, and seeing a far-future high-tech society based on Vietnamese culture was so cool, but this book features...

-A really weird case of insta-love

-One of the main characters insisting over and over (and over and over and over) that her people's evil practices are fair and fine, actually, because they're slightly less evil than the empire's

-A purportedly 6-year-old child who alternates between being a toddler, a marriage counselor, and a professor

-Aspec characters only existing to be villains

-Some words that maybe should have gone untranslated (Characters calling each other ‘big sister' and ‘little sister' during sex just feels wrong to me)