It was really hard for me to get through this book. The plot seemed very promising at first but I think the author reduced their main characters to one key charactertrait, their skin color, and that made them feel bland and boring.
I loved the idea of this book, combining a tale by Hans Christian Andersen with the real life events of the dancing plague of Strasbourg in 1518, plus adding diversity through Romani and queer (trans) characters. I don't know a lot about Romani culture, so I really appreciate this representation here that made me interested in researching more about Romani history etc. And it's absolutely correct that POCs and LGBTQ+ people existed in medieval Europe, which seems to be often forgotten in literature. So I wanted to love this book really badly, but the execution of the plot didn't do it for me, I didn't enjoy how the three perspective's were intertwined and the writing style didn't have anything special about it sticking out to me. Overall, it was a mediocre and okay read.
-1 because why did we go to the present?
