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*Thank you to the publisher via Netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review*

This was a little disappointing, not going to lie. There are multiple reasons for this, but I do want to say that I think the story had real promise. A large part of that was due to the world-building. I thought the world was really cool and interesting. I loved the steampunk/silkpunk elements (I'd love if this were more common in books, but I recognize that it's not all that popular) and I thought the base story "Girl disguises herself to join prestigious inventors' guild to solve her father's murder" is interesting. Unfortunately, nothing else about this story really hit the mark for me.

Firstly, the pacing felt... off. This is a pretty chunky book and while right off the bat, Ying sees her father being murdered, the bulk of the book felt a bit of a slog at times. The ending, too, felt far too rushed for all of the build-up up to that point. There's another issue I have with the pacing that ties into the ending, but I'll get there (because it is a bit of a spoiler).

As the main character, I feel like Ying could've been really interesting. I never really connected with her, though. Part of that was because there was a lot of telling rather than showing in regards to Ying's thoughts and emotions. That, and it seemed like her character was stretched into too many different paths and never really committed too hard to any of them. At least, not in a way that felt satisfying to me.

As for the characters, they all had some of the same problem that Ying did, in that they were largely just imprints of characters rather than people I rooted for or hated. I feel like where it struggled the most was with Ye-yang (Ying's "love interest") and her father. Considering her father is such a looming presence over the entirety of the book, I thought he didn't play enough into the story in a way that felt like it mattered. And Ye-yang was... there. Again, he felt like a mirage of a character. His "romance" with Ying felt forced and boring to me. I couldn't figure out what, exactly, he saw in her and vice-versa. Plus, there's the fact that some of the power dynamics there were a little off from the beginning, which meant that I never really rooted for them. Point is, I never fully cared about Ying or Ye-yang as individuals, so trying to put them together was essentially pointless in my head.

Now, for the spoilers. I usually try to avoid doing this, but unfortunately, the ending really soured the entire book for me and I don't think I can explain why without spoiling just a little bit. So please avoid this part of the review if you don't want that.

The ending felt a bit like a slap in the face. This really ties into the pacing issue, mostly, because I feel like in another book this ending could have been very poignant and bittersweet. If the book had, honestly, avoided the Trials portion of the Guild stuff and relegated that to the background and focused more on Ying's father and her attempting to solve his murder, I think this could've worked. But a lot of the book was focused on the intricacies of the Guild, the other Trial-goers she makes friends with, her relationship with Ye-yang.... By the time the ending rolled around, it turned out that none of that stuff mattered. Her goal of being a Guildmaster as a woman and continuing her father's research was just thrown out the window. Again, this would've been a good reason, if we hadn't spent the majority of the book getting to know her competitors, having her make friends with them, getting to know the other Guildmasters... like, it all just felt pointless, in the end. And that frustrated me. I feel like it just could have been done so much better than it was.

I recognize that this is probably going to work for a lot of people. It does read like a C-drama and it has cool world-building. It just didn't work for me and left me frustrated at the end of it.