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2 stars means "It was OK".

If you already know a fair bit about Colonial British History, The Abolitionist Movement, The Opium Wars, Etymology, and Linguistics, then move along. You won't learn anything new. This book isn't written for you. I think it would be far more enjoyable if you know nothing of these subjects.

The magic system is interesting. Definitely some dark spots. The character development is not great. It would have been nice, for example, to have more character development of Victoire. We really only get a hint of it as what feels like an afterthought at the end. Ramy almost as bad. The main characters are all walking stereotypes, and each is simply an incarnation of their culture of origin. Even that exists not in a deep way, but mostly just as a function of their difference.

It was very transparent what the author was doing, all the way through. There were a few moments of delight (mostly etymological in nature), but the ending is blindingly obvious from very early on in the book. There was only one actual surprise in the entire book (and that was in the timing of an event, not the actual event). So, for me, this is an OK Historical Fantasy with a cool linguistic magic system, very strong anti-colonial theme, poor character development of most characters, and you can see the end coming for hundreds of pages. It was difficult to stay engaged all the way to the finish, because so much was so obvious. This took me far longer to read than most Fantasy books, because it was just hard to keep slogging through for so long with no surprises and no character depth.

The greatest strength here is the character writing. Different characters, starkly and distinctively portrayed. The characterization kept me reading to the end. Some weirdness with pacing/continuity, but this was the author's debut novel. I can't tell if it was an intentional tool to portray the neural atypical nature of several characters or just inexperience.

If you are widely read, you won't find anything new in this book. It is going to remind some people obviously of Snowpiercer. Warning. Snowpiercer spoiler:
This is Snowpiercer light, with everyone at the bottom of ship/back of train being people of color. Snowpiercer light, because they have many decks filled with varied crops on this generation ship. Horrid discrimination and abuse, with the lower/colored classes doing most of the manual labor (which for some reason this incredibly high tech generation ship does not automate), but lighter than Snowpiercer as the upper decks are not literally cannibalizing the lower decks, and while abuse is rampant, some lower deck people do have meaningful jobs/careers of a sort.

I suppose the primary goal of this book must have been to portray rampant violent trauma and how that locks people into a cycle where more trauma and abuse continues to occur:
It seemed utterly unrealistic that The General, so incredibly revered as the Hand of God by the entire ship, would refrain from taking power when his uncle died. He was SO dreading the new level of cruelty, but didn't make a move, despite his aristocratic upbringing. We are told he has also been horrifically abused in his past, but it seems not quite believable that a character of tremendous intellect and true religious devotion to doing good, in a position of close inheritance to the throne as it were, wouldn't make any moves to take power in order to prevent great cruelty an evil.

Also, did not enjoy the very abrupt ending.