I need these books to have a fandom, I need Zarenyia fanarts

Have some issues with the series overall but it was all very enjoyable and I loved all the characters, I'm sad that I have to let them go now. I started this year with this series and now it feels like these characters and stories were with me the whole time

I will be reading her other works because even if I did hate most of the characters they still made me feel things, and I do believe that her writing improved as the books went on. I think I'll be reading yellowface next

I did like how RF Kuang would explain war history and tactics, it was kinda jarring at times to interrupt the story just so someone could explain to Rin something she should already know, but I liked reading it, it was very interesting and I could tell the author is educated and passionate about it

The romance is by far the part I was most disappointed with because I felt there was no real chemistry or reason as to why Rin should like any of the men that surrounded her, but that might just be my own personal preference

All he did in school was try to kill her and be mean to her but suddenly they are besties out of it, just to go back to hating each other and I have to act surprised that he wasn't a great person all along. Same with Altan, I don't know why she liked him enough to obsess so much for so many books

I did really like the ending and how Rin's character changed, especially that fight at the end was very painful and emotional and made me feel a lot of things, I just wish I could have cared more about Nezha because I never bought into him ever liking Rin

At the end when she kills the trifecta and gets revenge on Speer it feels rushed and quick, they die and she has no opinions on how that completes her generational revenge, the plot just moves on to the next thing, which is weird considering how much that revenge was put into focus before that

I also feel like her motivations are not satisfying as most of it is trying to get revenge over things she did not experience herself, I get trying to connect to a culture that was taken away from you, but I wish she got to take revenge over things that actually happened to her

I understand the point of making her lie to herself over her own internal struggle while committing genocides or while trying to get over Altan, but I don't think it was needed to make that the main problem every 50 pages in every book

I get that sexism and how she gets treated is a big part of the book and the world she inhabits but I felt like it could have been better and less repetitive, specifically with how often Rin would say that she trusted no one just to trust another toxic man, or how she was over things just to go back

But then it just feels like that smart aspect of her gets ignored and the rest of the 3 books is her repeatedly failing because she dared to be cocky and then needs a man to slap her into place (justifiably a lot of the times as she will herself admit)

while just explaining things she should have known already from her education. I know that she got propaganda in school but in the first book she is shown to be logical and use her brain to make connections outside of what was taught (like how she figured out what really happened to Speer)

I don't understand what was the point of having them all go to a very prestigious school that supposedly taught them very well but then every time Rin tries to do something it gets revealed how stupid she is and the smartest (and meanest) man in the room can explain to her why she's stupid

A lot of the time it felt like the books were divided in very distinct parts ("this is the school part" "this is the battle part") and they didn't feel cohesive with each other. Specially with the school part being a foundation to the series but having no real narrative impact apart.

I liked the general concept and most of the plot points felt like they made sense, most of my problems were with the characters and some of the narrative choices. I do understand this was a debut series but I still have problems with it.