Beldryn
This was a such a mess. I don't even know where to start. There was barely to no plot, no character development, bad writing, it didn't even look like it was edited, the chapter headers give off my 10 year old help me make this, there were almost no explanations as to why characters did certain things, very little reason to like any of them, no exploration of the setting at all. Also all of this 400 paged book happened over the course of a single week. I swear, this could have been condensed to 100 pages max, and then we could have gotten into actual interesting things. This truly felt like an extended edition of setup.
The positives: the concept is interesting. The school, combined with the zodiac signs and different species was fun. I just wish we would have actually seen any of it come into play.
Vague spoilers from here on:
I firmly, FIRMLY disliked the constant invading of personal space. No boundaries whatsoever, and I don't care if you want to put this on "but it's their nature as an alpha male wolf" or whatever. Don't care. It was way too much. Also I once made the mistake of counting how many times the FMCs got horny over characters in one single chapter. It was 9 mentions in the first 5 pages alone. And it isn't as if this was an unlucky choice of chapter. I reckon if you pull out all the horny comments, you get 100 pages less. It was actually ridiculous. It's also funny how almost the entire ending wouldn't have happened if the MMCs weren't all hot and sexy. Nothing would have happened.
Also
Mouth-humping???? My eyes. Where is the bleach
I might have swooned somewhere in the last hundred pages. Oh my goddd but this was too good!! I would have liked the ending to be a bit longer, there was one element in particular I would have loved to see play out. And it could have done with some editing here and there. But man! The romance!! I LOVED it
Easy 5 stars. SUCH a great book, so well-written, though admittedly my eyes did glaze over some of the science bits. Who would have thought I'd be invested in a book with so little characters! It kept me hooked all the way through.
Also an immensly satisfying ending, it was so well done. (my face, too, did leak)
Contains spoilers
I don't even know what this book was trying to do. To call this a story might be an exaggeration. The title of this book is The Road to Oz, and that's to a T what is was. For about 220 pages it was literally the characters walking on the road to Oz. Dorothy starts out the story, and by and by she picks up random characters. Do these characters add anything? No, they do not. You could take out all characters and the end result would have been the same. The only useful character was summoned as a Deux ex Machina, he conveniently built them a sandboat so they could safely cross into the land of Oz, and then left. Mind you, this is the only challenge they faced. Good thing they didn't even need to use an ounce of brainpower to solve this situation!
About halfway it seemed that the author suddenly realised he needed some semblance of plot, so he went with a birthday party. During said birthday party, it was a stream of supposedly famous characters from Oz entering, with the addition of Santa Claus. No, I am not making this up.
They had a grand party and the wizard sent everyone home in soap bubbles reinforced with glue because that's how we roll here.
At one point there was a stream of sexual innuendos, that was really strange. There was also a surprising amount of near-horror. And also they kept bashing on stupid people, they taught the important lesson of exclusion to children and of course they fat shamed Santa Claus.
Easy 5 stars.
Having read Islington before, I knew some of what to expect. But holy shit did he deliver! He kept the interesting ideas and concepts, but his writing style definitely improved. And the ending (and middle and also start, to be fair), hooooooooooooo!
I don't know what to think. The mystery! The intrigue! The emotional damage!
This was epic. I loved it.
Where to even start.
I don't know how anyone could come up with the intricacies this plot had. The way the puzzle pieces were connected in such a satisfying way at the end, it gave me chills. Everything felt earned, and even the pieces that perhaps were convenient, still felt like they all fit. And of course, that's all explained so well by the story itself (iykyk).
Throughout this entire series, the emotional moments didn't punch me quite as hard as with other series, but then... Then came the ending. And then the tears were flowing very freely.
I still feel like this doesn't describe how I'm feeling about this series. It's so so wonderful, easily in my top 5. Easily.
Oh and I cannot count how many times I've cursed good sir James Islington.
A true indicator of just how much I liked this.
I'm not entirely sure what to rate this book. The first half of the book was, to put it frankly, quite boring to me. The fact that it was, obviously, written in older English didn't help either.
However, the second half was gripping in a way I didn't expect. I went back and forth between who to believe and who was “in the right”. Basically, the ethical points this novel brought up were what got to me.
