This book is Mulan x Three Kingdoms with a dash of Baru Cormorant, which is to say, it attempts to encapsulate some of my biggest likes in fiction in a tightly written package and manages to do so with flying colors. I find it funny that right after I finished Three Kingdoms, the next book I happened to pick up couldn't stop talking about the Mandate of Heaven, used li as a unit of length and had characters comparing themselves to Zhuge Liang. I guess it was written in the heavens!