Serpentine

I feel bad about giving this three stars because of how much I enjoyed the Silver Phoenix duology.

I felt like the character development was inconsistent. In the beginning, before Skybright's age is stated, I thought that she was twelve. Midway through the story, Skybright abruptly became written like her actual age of sixteen. I didn't feel like Zhen Ni had much character development at all, and seemed much younger than sixteen in a way that can't really be explained by her sheltered upbringing. I did enjoy all of the descriptions of the setting, including the food–everything was very easy to visualize.

I thought Zhen Ni's planned explanation of “practicing for when I have a husband” was amusing and now I want to know if it's documented that young women in premodern China used that to cover up sexual relationships with other women when caught. Throughout the narrative I got the impression that Skybright could be bi and seemed to be questioning whether how she felt about Zhen Ni was similar to her attraction to Kai Sen.

The problems in this book are not ones that prevented me from enjoying it overall, though at times I thought “What???” while reading. I'll probably read the sequel.