For me the weirdest anachronism was when he literally quoted "On His Blindness". Were we supposed to recognize it and think "Huh, okay, in this fantasy world they have Milton?" Were we supposed to miss it and think Liu had written it? I still haven't quite figured it out, but on the whole I think it works for me.

Princess Kikomi is like a little mini-opera, all to itself. The rest of the women are not written like that at all. The second half of the book works in very different ways than the first half, so... I dunno, I wouldn't counsel forcing yourself to continue if you're really getting frustrated. I definitely think there are significant problems in the first half of the book. But a lot (but not all) of the things that bothered me in the first half of the book didn't continue.