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I found this book in a bargain bin and thought it sounded interesting. A crime novel set in historical China? Sign me up!
Now I'm just glad I found it in a bargain bin, because otherwise I'd probably be a lot more disappointed.

Cause you see, the back of the book promised me a thrilling story about murder in the emperor's palace. That's what I wanted to read about!
Instead what I got was the tale of How Ci Has The Worst Day Of His Life Everyday. Literally everything in this dude's life that could go wrong, went wrong. Every damn time.
People died on him, people betrayed him, people stole from him, people wanted to hunt him down, people wanted to execute him etc. etc.
I assume all of this was to show us that Ci wouldn't be one of those protagonists people would just love and protect cause he was the main character and that while he (apparently) was a genius from the beginning, he still needed training to aquire a skill set that would get him into the royal palace. I do appreciate the thought, but he was the unluckiest guy I've ever read about and it was just exhausting.
Yet I stuck with this book, because I wanted to get to that damn murder case he was supposed to solve.

Finally, around page 380 of roughly 600, the plot aka the gruesome murder arrived. Now, know that it took me several weeks to get to that point. Know also that I finished the rest of the book in less than a day. I won't say that the murder case was the best I've ever read, but it was honestly engaging and for once I wasn't able to guess who was responsible right away. There were some twists and turns and some honestly interesting characters around. If the whole book had been written like that, I would have given it at least one star more.
Now, there was also some weird love story in the mix that I didn't really like, because male crime solving characters tend to become stupid when they see a beautiful woman they want to boing (as was the case here, too), but at least it sort of had a purpose. Maybe. How it ended certainly helped, even if I still have questions.

Another reason why I couldn't give this a higher rating was because the characters were either bland or flat out hateable, with only maybe two exceptions. Sadly our main character fell into the "bland" category, despite all the attempts to make him interesting and special without making him too perfect to relate to.
Despite all the unlucky things that happened to him and the bad decisions he unwittingly made (again and again), I did not feel anything for him till maybe right before the end. He was supposed to have been a genius from the start, but in the beginning most other people were simply crude and dumb, so he looked good in comparison only. Then he was supposed to have a genetic disorder that didn't allow him to feel any pain, but I wouldn't even have known it, if the text hadn't reminded me every time it was plot relevant, because Ci didn't act like it at all. No bruises or cuts he didn't remember getting or wondering what pain actually feels like when he's surrounded by violence and death all the time. Would have made him more interesting.

In the end, the most interesting character to me was his later mentor aka the only person who seemed to have brains, a heart and some common sense in this story. I liked his sort of fatherly relationship with Ci a lot and while I feared it was coming, I did not like that (view spoiler)[ it got revealed that he was in love with Ci. It added absolutely nothing to the story and I choose to ignore it. Definitely appreciated having a gay character, though. Especially since Ci didn't seem to care about his sexuality after the first shock moment. That was nice. (hide spoiler)] (Non-murderer spoiler! It's mostly harmless, but just making sure.)
He's definitely the one character I will remember best.

All in all, this is a pretty looking book on my shelf that could have been so much more than it was. If there was a sequel that was simply about another murder case, I would read it, though.