In The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang, we flit back and forth between three different time periods, 4 BCE, 1740 CE, and the present day. In the first, a young man is tasked with seducing the emperor but quickly learns that the situation is far more complicated than he expected. In the second, an innkeeper receives an unexpected visitor who asks for help in saving his grandmother, but the two of them discover a dangerous magic has a hold on her. And in the last, a recently-out college student meets a young man at a rave, then is drawn into the glamorous and treacherous world of the super-rich. As these men come together, it is slowly revealed that they have been reincarnated again and again, always brought close but always brought to tragic ends. They start to wonder if they can ever escape their hopeless fate, or if their love will always be brought to ruin.

I just don’t think that “romantasy” is for me. I’ll read books that have romance as the central driving force of the plot, and I’ll read books set in fantastical worlds with magic and adventure. However, I have yet to find a “romantasy” (the trendy blending of the two genres, and incidentally a word I flinch at every time I have to say it) that strikes a balance I like. In each one, even if there are cool fantasy elements, it gets set aside in favor of the love story. So it seems to always end up like a romance with magical elements as window dressing.

If “romantasy” works for you, though, that’s great! Obviously lots of people like it, and shouldn’t feel ashamed for doing so. I am simply not one of those people currently.

Because this book was… a weird experience for me. I read it as an audiobook, and while all three narrators—Dylan J. Locke, Will Dao, and Telly Leung—did a fine job, their voices were a little too similar. I know their characters were reincarnations of each other, but I would have liked them to sound a little different to help me keep track of which timeline I was in. The exception would probably be the man who voiced River (the present day character). But still, sometimes I struggled.

As for the storyline, I thought the idea of star-crossed lovers, constantly reborn in new forms but always finding each other, was really intriguing. And a lot of time, it was in this story, especially when the threads started to come together (mostly in the final act of the book). But for a lot of the time, it was like reading three entirely disparate tales.

Perhaps I would have been more into these three stories if it hadn’t been so… (I’m sorry, I can’t think of a better phrase) weirdly horny. As I said, I’m okay with romance and with reading some graphic sexual content. But the way this was written, with such flowery language and sometimes frankly ridiculous terminology, was quite off-putting to me. I don’t even want to find a quote as an example, just know it was kind of weird. Not to mention, there are a couple of scenes where the sexual acts are not entirely with consent, and that’s never a recipe for a good reading experience. Also, can we not refer to someone the protagonist is attracted to as a “boy,” please? Even if their age gap isn’t that big, and they’re both actually adults, it still feels predatory and gross.

Ugh, okay, on another note, there were some good aspects of this. Huang is adept at describing settings; I could picture each locale vividly, from the Endless Palace’s mysterious hallways, to the lush forests surrounding the inn, to the wild chaos of a modern-day party. I also liked several of the characters, especially in the modern timeline. These people felt more real, rather than “characters,” if that makes sense. Garden and Calvin were probably the best, but I liked River and Joey well enough too. I do wish better things had happened to Calvin, though! I wasn’t sure of him at first, but he’s such a good man, and one of my favorite characters by the end.

Speaking of the end, the finale of this story was kind of cool, in terms of the magical elements, but the emotional aspects of it fell flat for me. When I glanced at my audio app, I was surprised to find I had only one percent left, because is that really how it ends? And yet, that was how it ended, and I found it kind of disappointing.

So overall, The Emperor and the Endless Palace wasn’t all bad, but several things really didn’t work for me. Good characters, gorgeous settings, and intriguing magic and folklore didn’t quite make up for the questionable descriptions of sex and romance. I am sure that fans of this genre will like this, though, especially if you enjoyed Daughter of the Moon Goddess or similar stories. And Justinian Huang definitely has potential as an author!

The Emperor and the Endless Palace is available now.