The magic system was great, and I really enjoyed the linguistics parts. However, the characters felt incredibly boring, bland, kinda stupid at times... For a world with magic, it felt just like ours, and in fact magic changes nothing in its history compared to ours.

The footnotes were the cherry on top of my dislike, turning it into loathe. I don't like being told what to think and how to interpret things.

I felt that Kuang was breathing down my nape, silently watching me to make sure I got the point of that slavery, capitalism and colonialism are bad.