Michu

An interesting premise that goes a little nowhere and ends where you think it will.

I changed my rating to five starsa because while I was left scratching my head after the novel, I cannot stop thinking about it and missing the gorgeous and bizarre atmosphere.

To be honest, DNF. It starts in the middle of the last book and I found that I couldn't remember what was happening, nor did I care to look it up, nor were there any context clues in the first chapters to jog my memory. I felt between this and the last novel, like the main character became really whispy and pathetic. I just wasn't compelled anymore.

I became deeply invested in the world and character building so I needed to read it. But the narrative became rushed and there were a lot of interesting plots that seemed to have their heads chopped off. I wondered afterwards of this was supposed to be more than one book, but needed to end here for some reason, or if a deadline crept up on the author. A fun read, but I wanted more than that from the well established universe.

Spoiler:


the connection to her other universes was well established and then in this book seems incredibly forced and doesn't benefit or build the ACOTAR lore at all, but just deus ex machinas it. I hope this is somehow redeemed in other books in either series but I don't feel it will be. They just used it as kind of a way to use artifacts from one series in another. I expected the connection to be way deeper than that. It also doesn't benefit either series to deepen the lore in both, connect them, and then never explain how it affects either universe. it feels like the corny thing they do in MCU post credit scenes l
Readers and the established worlds deserve so much more.

Maybe? Ugh. No. Maybe? Yes for a second. Absolutely not. Okay? Hmm. Sure. No. Ugh.

If you took Shakespeare's Tomorrow and tomorrow soliloquy and added a million pages.

Some bright spots of hope and interesting interjections about art and beauty but all in all a slice of life turned into a textbook about ennui. I kept wanting to be let out.