Reading Diary: Strike the Zither by Joan He

Here is a synopsis from the author's website:

The year is 414 of the Xin Dynasty, and chaos abounds. A puppet empress is on the throne, and three warlordesses each hope to claim the continent for themselves.

Only Zephyr knows it’s no contest.

Orphaned at a young age, Zephyr took control of her fate by becoming the best strategist of the land and serving under Xin Ren, a warlordess whose loyalty to the empress is double-edged—while Ren’s honor draws Zephyr to her cause, it also jeopardizes their survival in a war where one must betray or be betrayed. When Zephyr is forced to infiltrate an enemy camp to keep Ren’s followers from being slaughtered, she encounters the enigmatic Crow, an opposing strategist who is finally her match. But there are more enemies than one—and not all of them are human.

According to the author, this is a reimagining of the classic Chinese novel Three Kingdoms. I'm not familiar with it, but as I read it, I could recognize elements that have become tropes in dramas and other stories. It took me a long time to finish reading this book, only partly because life has been cuckoo bananas. Something about the pacing was off for me. I knew that this would be part one of a pair of books (Sound the Gong comes out next April), so it wasn't the cliffhanger that bothered me. I don't know. I don't think I'll read the sequel. It was fine. I almost didn't finish except I got close enough to the end that I decided to push through. I can't quite put my finger on just what didn't work for me, just that it didn't.