Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This one is hard for me to rate/review. There were a lot of concepts I really liked about the book and I was really compelled by the idea. It started a little slow and some of that was just getting used to the universe and terms. The middle really picked up and I was super invested and then I felt like it slowed down again. Some of the parts seemed really disparate and felt like they had different tones which led to the book not feeling like it flowed well for me. One of the big things for me was after the big event in the middle of the book (which was the part I loved and got really invested in) the characters really seemed to change. And I get that they went through something life/self altering but I felt like the princess became an entirely different person and didn't retain much of her old personality. I would have loved more detail and background on the world too (but maybe this is my fault for simultaneously listening to another space opera that was twice the length of this). ( )

this is an important newish writer in this field, and it's a fine first novel, after some brilliant novellas. it's a study of young Misery as Joan of Arc in a far-future space opera, fighting an intensive religious war with glorious and misguided conviction. brilliantly written, but it's difficult at times to keep that conviction on track when Misery's singularly ecstatic point of view as Chosen conflicts too much with her assessment of the real situation on the ground. a wonderfully detailed world though, well worth every glimpse we get of it. and the story itself has a lot to say. ( )

This is an intriguing giant robot tale with good flow and engaging characters with a bit of multi-gendered spice. Misery is the turbulent "girl with something extra", well except for being a nixen who uses pronouns she/they, of ambiguous religious faith do to harsh treatment by her guardian brother, who was starting a clerical career while dealing with her intransigence and hiding her proscribed abilities. But when she is brought to court and later prison after both her delusion and the church call her the 9th Messiah destined to end the war with the Heretics, her belief in her own cause takes over. Neon Yang uses framing and the language of skepticism in telling a tale of person moved by faith and enabled by politics so that the reader is never the believer the MC and their associates are. ( )

What an amazing ride this book was! Action packed and never slowed down. I loved the religious aspects of the story and the way different types of stone did different types of powers. The world building was phenomenal. I really would love to see another story in this world because the characters were very interesting and I just wanted to know more about them. Update, how did I not know this was going to be a trilogy?! I'm freaking stoked! ( )

After dealing with a novel that started out strongly, then went down hill rapidly, it was a pleasure to read a book where the author has their act together across the board. Misery Nomaki, a street punk who wants to do some living before she loses her mind like her mother did, is only able to act on her drives once she begins a conversational relationship with a being she interprets as having the nature of an angel; it's from there that the fun begins. How much you're going to like this novel is going to depend on how you feel about how Yang puts distance between the reader and Misery, as our main character becomes the stuff of legend, and starts buying into the legend herself. I personally am looking forward to the rest of the trilogy, as if it's anything like Yang's "Tensorate" novellas, she's in no hurry to give up her secrets. ( )