****May contain spoilers****
I was really excited to read this book as it seemed like something right up my alley, but I was unfortunately disappointed. The easiest way to describe this book is disjointed, incohesive, and abrupt. The conflicts/resolutions sprinkled throughout as well as the overarching conflict with the "big bad" at the end, left much to be desired. I'm not entirely sure the author knew the direction they wanted to go with this story, which I thought had a lot of potential but ultimately fell flat. It felt like many details were thrown in haphazardly or as an afterthought. The writing style is clunky and although it gets slightly better further in, it doesn't flow well overall. I found myself distracted from the underlying storyline by how I would change the sentence structure to make it sound better. The worldbuilding is confusing (I still have no idea what time-period it is supposed to be emulating), and I found the switching back and forth of modern lingo and old timey, formal language to give a bit of whiplash. Besides the setting, the judicial and magical system, as well as the government hierarchy, were extremely hard to follow. Although there is a glossary and a chart included, an exceptional writer (in my opinion) should be able to seamlessly "show not tell" through the story they weave. I found it slightly annoying that the main character, as a doctor, was described doing CPR entirely incorrectly. There also needs to be some type of trigger warning for r*pe and a**ault, as it was very jarring to come across that late into the novel. I really wanted to like this book, and while there were a few very well written lines and I enjoyed the sassy banter from the main character, to put it plainly, this book felt messy and almost random. Not in the fun, scandalous way the description implies, but in a way that leaves the reader feeling lost and wondering what the whole point of what they just read was.