Heavenly Tyrant

Overall, I enjoyed this book much more than I did Iron Widow. I greatly enjoyed seeing the main character develop more, and also face more consequences for her actions and beliefs than I believed she did in the prior book. On the political side, I enjoyed some of the exploration, but felt that at times it was too on the nose in terms of essentially having semi-recent real-life economic situations copied wholesale into the world, and sometimes in a way that didn't feel quite right for how that works worked.

Based but nuanced book, nice SciFi-Fantasy without the liberal bullshit but actual materialist and progressive (as in non-bourgeois feminism and queerness) socialism. It's far from a literary masterpiece, but it was quite an enjoyable read.

The Acknowledgement section is great too; to quote a part of it (also the first time I saw a b/w printed emoji in a book like ever):

To Qiu Jin, Alexandra Kollontai, Rosa Luxemburg, Angela Davis, Thomas Sankara, Kristen Ghodsee, Paul Cockshott, and Allin Cottrel, whose speeches and writings were a huge source of the inspiration for this book

hello? based department? I'd like to nominate a novel

+ said douchebag emperor gets pegged by the Empress (MC), LIKE CANONICALLY. There even was a "Peggy Amendment" by the author to make it more clear like aocjwbfooskefn

(I only regret one thing with my experience with the novel: I mutilated my hard cover edition by scribbling the "Peggy amendment" in my horrendous handwriting using ballpoint pen, thanks to a sleep-deprived excitedness... I should have just printed out the amendment as the later tutorials instructed 😔)