I'm sure there are people in the world who enjoy books that begin as soap opera drama featuring a main character denser than a brick and end as an adventure fantasy with a main character who is only slightly less dense. But I am not one of those people. Why in the world did it take over 300 pages for the plot to actually get moving? What was the point?? Just to make me suffer??? And then it had the gall to almost be interesting in the second half. The writing was fine, the main character drove me insane, and the world building was pretty neat. Once I finished it, I was almost tricked into wanting to read the sequel because I'm a sucker for political fantasies and it seems like it was going that direction. Alas, I cannot forgive the sin of literally why did it take half the book to actually start the plot.