Strike the Zither

DNF

Did not appreciate the style of this book at all. It reminded me of KJ parker at his worst, but stuffed into the mindset of a teenager who thinks they're better than everyone else. The Three Kingdoms inspiration was so blatant, which is fine for a retelling, but sometimes made me roll my eyes (“Red Phoenixes” instead of “Yellow Turbans”) and it felt like the beginning of this book was so lacking in context if you are unfamiliar with the source (it basically starts in the middle of Changban, which is the middle of a conflict that starts a decade earlier).

Also the book gender bent everyone into women, which can do interesting things but even the soldiers were all women so I was just left wondering what all the men were up to.

Also the names were stupid. Why did some people have Chinese inspired names and others just have names like Cloud or Lotus.