It's so frustrating when a book with a fascinating concept ends up being extremely boring. I usually stop reading a book once I start feeling like I have to "get through it" rather than enjoy the process, but I decided to stick through this one for a reading challenge. A lot of the dialogue and internal monologues consist of exposition dumps, and the characters are cardboard. The romance between the two protagonists didn't feel organic. It just felt like they were falling in love because they were the romantic leads. Moreover, the author brings up topics that would be very interesting to explore, such as the existence of an empire and a pantheistic religious system, but those are not discussed in detail.