Sterling Parker

I think I went into this book not knowing what to expect. I've finished it, and I'm still not quite sure what I read. It's one of those books that makes me either think I'm too shallow to get the point, or perhaps I get the point but I'm too jaded (or emotionally guarded) to feel it. Perhaps I actually expected too much or too less than what the book was willing to give, and in some form of ironic justice I'm inexplicably disappointed that I didn't get whatever I expected.

All I know is that this book moved me in some way. I cannot say what way it was. Maybe I need to read it again. Maybe it'll come to me in an hour or a day or a week. I'm not sure I want it to, because there's something incredibly powerful there. It's a little frightening.

I started reading this book about 9:30 this morning. Intended to take an hour, ended up finally finishing it around 12:05.

I feel like crying. I just want to sit for the rest of the day and not do or say or think anything, but just cry a little. It's a feeling like you've been punched in the chest for no good reason except that you believed the world was an okay place but it's really not, and I could say a bunch of self-indulgent pretentious things here, but what good would it do?

I mean, I like reading things that make me feel, but I think I got a bit more than I bargained for here. And it's not like a fullness of feeling, it's like a sheer empty wasteland of feeling. It takes your feels out in the desert and guns them down in cold blood then comes back and kicks you in the teeth for having feels in the first place, how dare you.

I need to go hug some puppies or something. On a side note, the movie was an incredibly good adaptation.

Not sure what else to say. Just kinda feel like I've lost something I didn't even know I had.

This is one of the earliest Star Trek books I remember reading, somewhere around the age of 10 or 11. Today, enemies to reluctant allies is one of my favorite tropes in fiction. I believe that was heavily shaped by this book.

Reading it again as an adult, the writing is pulpy and thin but still effective. The battle scenes and tactics have imagery that sticks in my memory. The story leans in hard to the classic Trek style of highly competent people solving complex problems with a combination of wit and grit. Unfortunately the ending is a bit of a rushed letdown, and the alien race of the Narr get precious little page time compared to how interesting they seem.

Still, I'm happy this is a childhood favorite that holds up nicely to an adult re-read.

I am not a huge consumer of modern trope-y fantasy literature, but I did cut my teeth on Sarah J Maas' entire bibliography at the end of last year, because my wife loves all of it.

Fans of ACOTAR (like my wife) will probably like this a lot. For me, it's solidly “so okay it's average”. That said, Bean's exhaustive review is also 100% correct in substance so I won't repeat it here, just to say go read that review.

My biggest gripe though, has to be one of the core conceits around the main character. Namely [early plot spoilers] why would you give us a main character who grew up in a savage amazonian realm where the people eat hearts and can grow flowers with blood and are tragically fated to kill anyone they fall in love with so they're basically badass wendigos with nature powers... and then have said main character affected by exactly none of those unique and cool and interesting factors? It's literary cowardice. We could have had so many cool logistical conflicts, but now it's all replaced by a few throwaway lines about pretending to have those conflicts. Pulling a stunt like this doesn't make the main character unique, it makes her generic. The eventual reveal ([major ending spoiler]"Oh she had powers all along it was just cloaked by the other powers she also had all along, but somehow none of the curses that go with those powers?!") reads more like post-hoc justification for a poor character design choice.

Anyway, not a terrible book. But certainly a flawed one, which is unfortunate because it could have been really interesting if it wasn't so intent on checking all the genre boxes.

Predictable and trope-y, but also creative and engaging. I enjoyed the dragon lore and world setting, and the characters feel unique and identifiable with reasonably clear motivations/rationale. Enjoyed less the cartoonishly edgy tone; it felt really tryhard and forced sometimes.

More generally, characters touching explicitly on topics like "consent" and "toxicity" is a good way to score points with Tumblr and BookTok but feels really out of place in the setting. I feel it could have been handled more subtly. I also can't quite tell if the ridiculously over-the-top "training" is a critique/satire of warrior cult mentality, or a genuine rule-of-cool expression of it. Doesn't help that the main character's perspective is so completely normalized to the culture that she barely even questions it.

But, questions perhaps the sequels will answer. I'm intrigued enough to keep going.