Roisin

11/10 Stars. 
This book blindsided me. I haven't yet sat with my thoughts on this long enough to express coherent opinions, actually. So this is a word-vomit type of review. I just had to write this down now before I lost my grip on my feelings. 
This book blindsided me! I knew where it came from. I read the synopsis for the original text and didn't like it; not interested. But then I read Alchemised's synopsis on Goodreads, and I was positively curious about the world that is described. So I decided that I will give the published work a chance, instead. I wasn't actually planning to read this just yet. I had just started Practical Magic and I was really enjoying that, but then...I don't know. Curiosity got to me, and I said to myself, “I will just...check out the first pages. See if I can see the influences in the text.” 
And...before I knew it, I was sucked in. Sure, I think the first 25 chapters don't really do the heavy work of making you invested in all the characters and story, but it does make you interested in Helena and whatever the hell happened to her. I could detect the influence in those early chapters and I was almost cocky in how I saw myself predicting the plot and seeing where it was headed. 
But then...the book fcking blindsided me! I thought I knew what I was getting myself into, but no...I didn't really. 
This was such a beautifully grotesque story. It's very well-written, in that it aims for a form of obsessive investment in the reader that books these days don't really do. This is something you frequently see/saw in Fanfiction but traditionally published works don't work this hard to keep you invested for the next chapter (I think for obvious reasons but in case you missed it: It's because you have already bought the entire book. They don't have to pitch themselves to you again and again. They only need to do that once at end if there is a sequel. Not with Fanfic. With fanfic, the author tries to make sure you are still interested to come back for the next chapter, every chapter. So, the stakes are much higher, the cliffhangers are brutal, and the characterization and plots are borderline addictive.) Alchemised tries to gut you with each paragraph. It twists the knife in your wounds and drags you around the bloody floor (Sorry...this book was very bloody and goreish. The images have lingered). It takes you in its clutches, makes you watch the atrocities of war with a VIP lounge front-row seat, and it makes you question everything you have: your morals, your judgment, and your capacity for empathy and violence. It's a brutal, raw look at what war does to people and what it expect from those it eats away at.
And as the story progresses, the writing improves and the shadows of the original work are lifted until these characters and their story manage to stand on their own two legs. No trace of the original there anymore. I could not tell who was who and what could be what. It completely develops into its own new thing, and what a thing of beauty it is. Beauty but in a very...ugly way? This book doesn't glorify war. It doesn't romanticise heroism. It cuts it open and shows you the festering rot within. It was so GOOD! So nuanced. 
I know people fixate on the romance. There is a reason for that. Because when everything you have is burned to ashes and you have nothing and no one to hold on to, an impossible romance is such a heartbreaking symbol of hope for an impossible future; one that is simple enough that it can hold love in it. A future worth fighting for. A stake beyond survival. So I get why people fixate on that; it's beautiful and tragic and breaks your heart at a higher velocity than if this were clinical and written with no emotional stakes. But the book is so much more than just a doomed love story. This is a fantasy story about what war does to people, and there is romance in it, as well. Because...I don't know, love makes war that much worse.
My favorite bit is that nothing about this story is easy. Not love, not morals, not victory and loss, nothing. No one makes easy choices. There are no easy answers. You are suffocating on the complexity and ambiguity of the situation, and that's perfect! 
I love that we have this book. This is what we deserve. Not cookie-cutter stories that string a bunch of tropes together and add a veneer of appropriate social behavior on top of it like a bow-wrapped gift, and act like they did something revolutionary because they gave in to the rules of passivity that our world demands from everything and everyone so we can all be advertisement-friendly. This book grabs you by your balls, whether you have them or not, and makes you see the difficult parts that no one likes to look at. We need stories like this. I needed this. I felt more alive reading this than I had in ages. It had been so long since a book clawed at my heart and mind like this. I absolutely loved it. I am so grateful it was published. It would have been a crime to let it be confined by the world of another person's story. Especially when this world is so much more interesting! 
Did I mention the world-building was amazing? Because it is. I was confused at first, but as we got more and more and MORE (lol) exposition and explanations as the story develops and I really warmed up to the magic system. This world has a complex system of religion and folklore. There is complicated politics, racism, and misogyny that are rooted in in-world dynamics and beliefs. It's just very elaborate. Yes, there are info-dumps, but I keep thinking if those were to slowly unfurl, not only would we have been so confused for much longer, but also the book would probably have to be 2ooo pages long. So sometimes you get info dumps. 
Also, apparently, this is written in passive language. I...had no issue. It's a bit claustrophobic but that's the point. I enjoyed the writing style. 
What else to word-vomit about...
I loved the world, I loved the plot, I loved the ambiguity and nuance and moral grayness, I loved the romance, I loved the characters...Most of all, I loved how harsh and unforgiving the book was when it came to the matter of war. It was just so raw.
So do I recommend the book? No. No, you don't deserve nice things (or the emotional trauma! lol) You are not going to handle this, and you're gonna just piss me off with your moral coding and purity culture outcries(maybe, I don't know), so don't read it. Also, don't read it if you are not interested/ready to be traumatised. There is body horror...so much body horror...SO MUCH!!!!!! There is loss of body autonomy, sexual assault, torture, murder, gore, decomposing bodies, and so much more...there is a list of triggers, so take care and check those and imagine every warning is for the extreme and avoid this if it's not for you...because sometimes, some books are NOT FOR YOU. And that's okay! We don't all need to like the same stuff. I actually like hurting myself by reading books that make me want to vomit out my heart. I spent days sobbing over this, I'm not normal! Don't be like me! 
I loved it. If you are like me and actually enjoy reading upsetting fiction that will traumatise you for life, go ahead! This is worth the trauma, I say. If you don't like that type of stuff, just avoid it. Take care of yourself, instead. 
ALSO in regards to “romaticiation of rape”:  No...no, it doesn't. OMG! The rape scene is extremely traumatising to read about. Both characters are disturbed. It's about eugenics. It's intrusive, and it's a double rape. It's horrifying. There was nothing romantic about it. If someone found THAT scene romantic...I'm sorry, they're the problem. There wasn't even any descriptions. It was just about the emotional terror and the aftermath trauma. No gratuitous descriptions, no romantic atmosphere. Just horrific criminal injustice done to the characters. Like, know the difference between “depiction of a situation” and “romaticisation” of it.
Anyway, I am so glad I read this. This book will stay with me for a long, long, long time. 
And I'm realizing, this is the kind of work I like. The kind that rips your heart out and ruins you. I know it's not literary fiction or highbrow, and maybe I'm supposed to like that stuff because I'm a literature person now, but I would be lying to myself. I like this type of story, where the story seeps into your bones and stays with you like a parasite. The kind where dramatic stuff happens and you care about the plot and events, the romance, and the characters. I guess I'm not sophisticated enough for intellectual literary fiction. I guess I'm basic. Whatever. I like my fiction messy. 

Why did I read this?! How did I read this?!
This was...utterly bad! And yet, I read all one thousand pages of nonsense, so who's the real clown here?!
Let me get this straight (pun NOT intended), this book is weird. As in, I am half-convinced that a cat in heat wrote this! I'm not even gonna touch on the problematic aspects. Even at its most nonproblematic, this book lacks a basic understanding of how humans function, both socially and anatomically. Seriously! I had so many moments when I would pause reading and just stare into the middle distance, as if waiting for someone to materialise out of thin air and confirm my confusion at the ludicrousness of what I had just read! A character jumps out of the fourth floor and lands on his feet?! The snakes open doors?! The sex barely makes sense, like these guys should be in a hospital, I am worried for their physical well-being. It's just so weird.
I don't recommend this book to anyone, honestly. Only read it if you have a morbid curiosity to see why everyone says this is bad.
I will admit, it had its moments. But for the most part, this felt like a book written about gay men for the straight male gaze! I think it just feeds into a very testosterone-filled idea of physical over emotional relationship. And...okay I can't say that because there are emotions and the characters think a lot about how much they love each other but they rarely if ever say it out loud. And that seems like such an annoyingly guy thing to me. Why would a woman write men like this?! We can't even trust a woman to write a proper man, anymore?! There was hardly any emotions there. The sex is weird and wild in a very unrealistic way, the men are all so macho and unwilling to show proper emotions...it's like who was supposed to enjoy this?! There's very little emotional communication in the book and that is the most frustrating edging it puts the reader through. Because the main couple actually work so well together but they hardly ever talk to each other like mature people and that's so frustrating. So whenever they express the bare minimum of emotions or show any softness towards each other, I was eating it up like a starving man. Those moments are rare, however, and you really have to work through the rest of this book to get to them. For the most part, the sex scenes, which I believe are supposed to be the main attraction point of this book, are bland or mechanical. They get wild, but without a proper emotional anchor, they don't mean much. This gets better slightly as the book progresses. Some of the scenes work, but there's also such an uncalled-for violence in many of these scenes that they end up ruining the mood, anyway.
I would say this: the inherent illogicality of this book aside, the scheming is actually top-notch! These are 100% diabolical people who properly screw people over with 3D chess mindgames and gambles, and it kind of makes sense in that odd way that things make sense in nonsensical situations...you know?!
So this was not good. Not really. But it had its moments. Don't read it. Just watch the show instead...and know that every illogical thing from the show is directly the book's fault!

So while Heated Rivalry had less of a consistent plot and was mostly made up of snapshots of the protagonists' meetings through the years and really only got into having a proper plot in the last 30/40% of the book, The Long Game is much more plot-driven with the characters each having clear growth arcs and struggles and side characters who are fleshed out. This was less about the sex (though there was plenty of steamy scenes in it) than the previous book, what with Shane and Ilya already being in a loving and stable relationship. So for someone like me who isn't necessarily a fan of excessive spice and prefers a more cohesive plot-driven story, this should have been the obvious favorite and I will admit, it was better written than the previous book...but I think I actually prefer Heated Rivalry? There is an anxiety in the narrative of this book that made me not so eager to read this. So to compare the two, I finished Heated Rivalry in 24 hours but had to take long break while reading The Long game and so it took me much longer to finish the book. There is something about the unconventional story of rivals falling for each other and doing everything secretly that made Heated Rivalry so compelling. So even though I wasn't crazy about the format, I liked that book better.

The Long Game still felt like a reward, a consolation prize to see Ilya and Shane be loved and happy and finally end up where they belong and that was so cozy and sweet and by the end of the book I was giddy with happiness. I think it's worth a read. For Hollanov's sake, if nothing else!

This was a good read but I can't say I was wowed by it. The set up is interesting and I had heard such wonderful reviews of this that I had to check it out. The prologue I think was the most intriguing part of the book and the reason why I decided to read it. It would go on to take almost the entirety of the book before I received the due pay off of that beginning and that pay off was still  the best part of this book for me. 
I had a few issues with this book. The main one was the world building to me was very thin and not entirely well-developed. I think a lot was left vague or brushed aside too easily and quickly. I would have loved better a build and developed world in this book. It felt like the world of the story ended at the edges of what was immediately necessary to develop the narrative that the main characters were walking through. Everything was too easily explained. And I think this bothered me more because the story is a glorified road trip through the entirety of this land so I expected a more fleshed out universe. This also connects to my second issue which has to do with distance in the book. It seems every location is only a day's journey or so away and it made no sense for this world to be so small or so accessible. It felt like this world was squeezed to be smaller just so we could arrive to the next most important plot location faster. I did not love that. 
Also the world “ignoble” was used way to often.
The other issue I had with this book was how predictable some elements were and no, I don't mean “Oh, this was built into the fabric of this book so I saw it coming”. Actually the book wasn't that predictable and while some elements were woven into its fabric and the reveal was expected to some logical degree, those still carried the element of surprise and landed well. My issue was that there was a fallacy in the logic of the quest in this story that I saw the moment the matter came into play at the beginning and the characters were just too naively unaware of when they should have at least questioned it a little bit. Especially considering how the whole plot is about questioning authority and unchecked power. (sorry I'm being vague to avoid spoilers! Here is the spoiler version: That boy king was shifty as F from the very beginning! What do you mean none of you idiots questioned WHY he has to have control of all the bloody magical objects?! If they suck so bad why not destroy them after you find them?! Why hoard them? It was so obvious that he was going to go evil by the end and the whole book I was side eyeing his boney ass and I was right! And I'm mad that I was right because how dare these character be so stupid?! They were dealing with that Abbess this whole time and they still didn't see the giant power hungry plot hole in the quest?! These characters should have seen this and they didn't because the plot needed them oblivious and I hated that.
Some other issues I had with the plot got resolved by the end so I won't hold that against the book. 
The romance was okay. In fact, it had such perfect elements in it that it should have been a swoon worthy ideal but it still fell a bit flat for me. Granted, the romance is not remotely the focus in this story and by the end I was rooting for the lovers, but I am not obsessed with them. I just think it was a cute little subplot in the background. 
My favorite character is the Batlike Gargoyle. I adore him. I could read a 5 book saga just focused on him going about having his adorable little adventures. He was a delight. This book gets a whole star just for him. I loved him. He was the main reason why I kept reading. And his story made me cry, by the end. More of him, please!
So overall, I liked this book but it wasn't a great masterpiece. It was an enjoyable read. I might pick up the sequel. 
P.S.: By the way...Not a romantasy!

I can't review Hunger Games books. I can only sob and gesture vaguely around me.

If you want to know what it's like, read it, like you should.

Horrifying. Absolute all-fire despair.