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1.5 stars
Let the record show that I was very excited about this book and it had all the ingredients to be something I'd love, but ultimately everything about this ended up feeling half-baked. Reading this was one of those experiences where I kept having to pause to take note of everything that frustrated me, and so now this review comes to you in 6 parts.

My full review ended up being ungodly long, so if you're not interested in coming to my TED Talk, here's the tl;dr version:
? This book was set up to have a major focus on engineering, but only had these moments shoe-horned in and never gracefully incorporated in any ways that would support the plot or character development.
? The "high stakes" trial element of this book also always felt like an afterthought and never managed to make the stakes feel as dire as they supposedly were.
? All the characters in this book were faceless cardboard cutouts of people whose actions and motivations would seemingly change on a whim for the sake of plot convenience.
? The world beyond the walls of the engineering guild was never meaningfully explained and left us with no concept of the larger consequences of everything the guild was working towards.
? The book as a whole felt painfully under-edited, immature, and like it desperately needed another round of revisions.
? Despite claiming to be a YA book, everything about the writing and the characters themselves made this feel more like it was intended for a middle-grade audience, but with some romance, violence, brothels, and an 18 year old protagonist forced in so it could pretend to fit into YA.


For those undaunted by what has become an entire essay of a review, read on!
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An engineering book that has a severe lack of engineering
This book had two things that I always eat right up in fiction, and that is an academia setting and a trial/competition plotline. I've been known to forgive and enjoy even mediocre books when they manage to play into those elements well, but this book took the potential those aspects gave it but continually forgot to give them any meaningful development.

One of the first things we learn about our protagonist Ying is that she's spent most of her life shadowing her father's engineering work and nursing it into a love and skill for the trade herself. We're repeatedly told how much Ying has inherited her father's passion, and at the very least how confident she is in her own talent, and so I assumed this meant that seeing Ying showcase her engineering skill and using it to solve problems and move the plot forward would be a key element in the book. And yet, despite the fact that 80% of the book takes place at engineering college, there is so very little engineering to be found.

Throughout the entire run of the book, we get to see Ying use her supposed talents exactly four times:
1) To plug a leaking barrel
2) During the second and third trials
3) To create one (1) weapon of her own invention.

And despite the fact that this is supposedly her passion, we never see her using or thinking about her rumored abilities at all outside of these instances. The instigating premise of the plot is Ying wanting to infiltrate the guild so she can uncover who was behind her father's death, but not once does she attempt to incorporate her abilities into solving that problem. There were so many blatant opportunities this book could have used to apply her engineering skills in service to the plot, such as:
? Having her create some sort of recording or listening device so she could spy on the people she suspected of being involved in her father's death
? Creating an early warning notification system so she could snoop in areas she's not supposed to be in, or at least sneak her bath in peace
? Crafting some sort of disguise that would either enable her to go undetected during conversations, or help keep her identity a secret.

And those are just the things that occurred to me with 5 seconds of thought as incident after incident occurred where Ying's lack of planning and foresight got her into trouble.

I think this is one of the ways where the book really falls victim to telling rather than showing, and neglects an open opportunity to weave its themes together to make the character feel like she actually has well-rounded and applied traits. Instead, every time we got to see some engineering device come into play, it always felt incredibly shoe-horned in, and as though it was only included because the book suddenly remembered it was supposed to be about talented engineers.

"High stakes" trials that the book seemed to forget were high stakes
The competition for a place in the engineering guild was the one area where I thought this book would be able to pull me in, but this device as well always felt like it was only included as an after-thought. When I compare this book's competition element to that of books like Divergent or The Blood Trials or even Fourth Wing, I think the major difference is that in those, as a reader we were made to feel the looming pressure of the next trial even when we were not actively in that scene, which is something that this book never managed to do.

The trials in this book would appear almost without any notice or discussion, and even though it is theoretically the biggest stressor in Ying's life, we never get more than a few throw away sentences suggesting she's thinking about it. The only trial that felt like it got any build up whatsoever was the first one, with at least a couple paragraphs spent talking about how everyone was cramming to study before their written exam (except Ying of course because she's too Special and Different for that). There was never a good sense of how much time had passed since the last trial or until the next one, nor the kind of work and study that would go into the students preparing for the trials.

The stakes of these trials also felt random and inconsequential at best. We're told at the very beginning of the book that during the last year of competition, only one in a hundred hopefuls earned their place in the guild, and so you'd expect a commensurate amount of pressure and desperation from the applicants to fight for those limited spots. However, because every part of the trials were treated so haphazardly, I never once felt the degree of odds that needed to be overcome to stay in the game. Supposedly about half the class was cut after the first trial, and an unknown number more after the second, but because we never got to know any of the characters who were cut in any degree whatsoever (only a few of them were even so much as named), it went almost completely without mention just how much the original class had been culled down as the trials went on. While being the kind of book it was, you already knew Ying was going to have plot armor to make it through to the end, it still would have made me more invested if any energy had been spent making me feel there being stakes at play, and if we had gotten to know any of the characters who were cut to make the consequences of failure feel more tangible.

While this is more of a nitpick, one thing I couldn't get over was how stupid the first trial was. The entire first trial consists of a 10-hour written exam where the applicants are asked a single broad question about the history of airships that they're supposed to respond to with everything they know about the topic. Beyond the fact that this setup in and of itself is nonsensical (there's no way any essay written on a single topic, from memory, for 10 hours straight is going to provide useful insight into their knowledge), the question itself was also something completely unhelpful to gauging engineering aptitude. If this guild has any real interest in determining who is actually a good fit to help advance their engineering efforts, it would have made far more sense if the question was something that tested their ability to think critically about a problem and find creative solutions to something complex and open ended. Being asked to recite everything you know about the history of something is not at all indicative of the skills one would need to think outside the box and develop new technology, and is the kind of set up that is doomed to lose them bright applicants who simply don't have as good of a memory as others. On top of this, when Ying is apparently the only applicant with the bold idea to take the question and use it to make an actual engineering suggestion, the guild leadership is shocked and appalled at her gall, and would have chastised and failed her had the High Commander not seen and been impressed by her work. (Which, side note, but you're telling me that with 100 students providing 10 hours worth of writing, this extremely busy and important military leader decided to take time to read their essays thoroughly enough that he was able to pick out the potential in Ying's out of everyone's??? bsffr.)

Every single character was underdeveloped, inconsistent, or, if they're lucky, both!
Despite this book being over 400 pages long, there was not a single character who got any meaningful or interesting development.
? Ying: Despite being our main character and getting the most page time, there was never any point where I felt like I knew who she was, or that any of the things we were told about her made sense. According to the blurb of the book Ying is supposed to be 18 (which I say because I don't remember her age ever being explicitly mentioned in the book itself, though it's possible I could have missed it) and the eldest daughter with only one older brother and multiple younger siblings. However, this is very much the sort of thing we're only told and never shown, because maturity-wise, I would have assumed she was about 14 based on how she talked and acted. Along with this, there's no useful explanation of how Ying came to be the way that she is. How did Ying, who supposedly cares about her siblings, avoid the pressures that came with helping care for and guide them as they grew up ¡ª especially considering she lost her mother years earlier? How is it that Ying is seemingly completely unchanged by the loss of either of her parents, and is able to continue acting like a child even when her circumstances should have forced her to grow up? Even immediately after losing her father, there's no time spent showing us that Ying is grieving or mourning what is supposed to be her most meaningful familial relationship. While to some extent that could be explained away with everyone grieving differently, and maybe her even channeling her mourning into a desire for revenge, more than anything her desire to infiltrate the engineering guild felt motivated by her own ambitions, with the goal of using it as an opportunity to dig into her father's death feeling like more of a convenient secondary benefit.
Especially since this is a YA book, I think it's possible to start with a character who is young and naive and sheltered so that we can see how they change and grow as they undergo different trials in their life. I think that Daughter of the Moon Goddess and Six Crimson Cranes both did a good job with this, with both protagonists coming from similarly sheltered and naive upbringings, but being forced to grow up when they lose/are separated from their parents. While I think the opportunity was here for Ying to undergo a similar arc, she felt completely unchanged up until possibly the last 10 pages of the book, and even then, I wouldn't trust the changes to last meaningfully into the next book.
? Ye-yang: Despite being the love interest and arguably the next most important character, I know nothing about this man. His actions were inexplicable and inconsistent at best, and there was never a single moment where I could understand what he saw in Ying, or she in him.
? Ye-kan: Possibly the only character in this book who got any amount of development, but even his arc felt like it changed arbitrarily to suit the whims of the plot. We're introduced to him as being a selfish, bratty, and entitled kid, but there would randomly be moments where he'd show kindness and loyalty seemingly out of nowhere. Honestly I think his arc was the only one I was at all interested in, but I think his growth needed to be treated with more consideration rather than just making him act the way the story needed to either for tension or salvation.
? Chang-en: Supposedly Ying's best friend, and yet we know about as much as we do as the other nameless and faceless characters in their guild class. He just sort of shows up and decides he and Ying are friends, and is kind to her (sometimes to his own detriment) for no rhyme or reason. How old is he? What is his background? What are his dreams? Why doesn't he have any other friends? This man literally only exists so Ying can have someone other than Ye-kan on her side and is completely insignificant on his own.

Worldbuilding? What world-building?
Again, this is a 400+ page book, and yet I don't think I could tell you a single thing about the world outside of the engineering guild. Apparently there's a war going on? Against some other country? That's been going on for some amount of time? For some reason? It's possible this was info-dumped on us at some point early on and it just didn't make an impression. If it was, it was never explained in a way that made it feel like it was meaningful to the overall story¡ª despite the fact that the instigating plot event has to do with the creation of weapons for this mystery war.

This book is crying out for another round of editing
Listen, you know it's bad when I actually go to the cover page to make sure there is an editor credited, because there were just so many things in this book that felt like no one had ever looked at them with a critical eye. For context: though I was gifted an early copy by the publisher, the copy I was sent was a finished, hardcover version, and thus these are things that I can't just put down to it being an ARC.

While a lot of these were little things in and of themselves, noticing choices and (possibly) mistakes multiple times throughout this book just contributed to the overall feeling I already had that this book read like a first draft. There were just so many things that felt like they would have been caught if this book had been looked at by a competent editor, but instead we're left with choices like:
? General scene inconsistencies/dropped threads, such as:
?? Ying falls and apparently bloodies her hands early on in the book, but is described as climbing up a ladder later that night with no mention of pain or discomfort
?? Similarly, Ying is supposedly beaten so badly that she claims she thought her legs would break, but is up and running around during the trial the next day with no mention of pain or difficulty
?? Ying is caught unaware while leaving Ye-yang's bathing chamber, and while one moment it's said she can't go outside due to her "state of undress", a page later she's talking to Ye-yang without any mention of her either having dressed or being uncomfortable being in his presence in her undergarments.
? Redundant use of abnormal dialogue tags (e.g., describing Ying as having "squeaked" her response twice within the span of a page and a half)
? Dialogue tags that just do not make sense for the things being said (e.g., a character described as having "quipped" something when he was literally just stating general information)
? Words simply being used incorrectly (please explain to me what a "bemused glimmer" of someone's eyes is supposed to look like)
? General awkwardly worded sentences (e.g. "she had swallowed everything down her throat" [what, as opposed to down her nasal cavity?])

I'm not someone who is particularly inclined to pay attention to or nitpick specifics about writing style choices, but all the little things in this book were distracting enough to pull me out of the story, and all just felt like something that could have been fixed with better editing.

Frankly, this is a middle grade book in a YA trenchcoat
I'm someone who reads a lot of YA fiction, so while I recognize that there's an extent to which I am not within this book's target demographic, I think that over the years, I've come to recognize when a book is otherwise good, but is just too young for me. However, even if it's targetted at the younger half of the YA age range, I feel like this book reads too young to even feel like a good fit for those in their early teens. Everything about the way its written ¡ª with lots of telling and no showing, everything over-explained, and very short, choppy, stilted sentences ¡ª feels like it's meant for a middle grade reader and not like it has any faith in the intelligence of the teenage readers who are supposedly the target audience. The protagonist herself feels as though she's in her early teens at best, and certainly does not feel like the 18 year old eldest daughter that she's supposed to be. I assume this book wanted to be YA so that it could spend more time on a romance subplot than middle-grade books typically do, but even that element felt so underdeveloped that it wasn't worth trying to age this book up in other ways. Simply having a (technically) new-adult main character and throwing in some violence and mention of brothels does not a YA book make. I think that if this book had just let itself be middle-grade and leaned into marketing itself towards that audience, it would have more luck finding its readers and its shortcomings would have been more forgivable.


Ultimately, I think the main reason I have so many complaints about this book is because it had all the bones to be something I could have really enjoyed and loved, but never managed to be anything more than a skeleton. This book read like a (very long) outline for a book that I'd actually like to read, and I'm just incredibly disappointed that there was not a single thing in this book that managed to deliver. Quite honestly, the only reason I'm not giving this book 1 star is because I tend to reserve that rating for books that I think are actually harmful in some way, which I don't believe this book was. However, I think this book needed a lot more work and refinement to suit its intended audience before it was ready to be published, and I think it's a shame that it didn't get it.

Many thanks to Penguin Teen for the early copy of this book. I'm so sorry I don't have nicer things to say about it. ?