kirisuna
Now that I understand how these books were written (one weekly web series publication at a time) I am finding it much more enjoyable. I appreciate that this started out with Carl and Donut strategizing; that they had grown to a team. I also found the quests and such interesting. And I like the over arching Borat company arcs playing into the day to day of the dungeon. I’m excited for the next one!
Contains spoilers
1.75 stars. This book is such a frustrating waste of an intricately crafted world that genuinely could have been incredible if the author had taken the time to make it so.
The world is built with so much care. Its geography, sociopolitical structure, and anatomy-based magic system all feel deeply connected, and the Cursed are one of the most plausible interpretations of vampires I have encountered. I wanted to understand the bloodlines, what had actually happened during the trials, what Nina’s father had discovered, and how all of those pieces fit together.
The problem is that the book makes those connections unnecessarily difficult to follow.
My first gripe: geography shapes nearly every part of the story, from politics, class, and culture to the relationships between different groups. Yet there is no map. The geographical aspects of the characters’ journey are essential to understanding the context of what is happening, but so much of their significance was lost on me because it was incredibly difficult to follow where anyone was at any given time.
The writing itself is not actually terrible. On a sentence-by-sentence level, much of it is not only readable but sometimes quite good. The problem is that the book is riddled with continuity errors, missing transitions, vague explanations, and emotional whiplash.
There are repeated physical continuity errors. Nina takes off her shirt in one scene, causing Max to look away in embarrassment when he enters the room. But the book never says she puts it back on as they continue their conversation and eventually leave, even though her being undressed was a central point at the beginning of the scene. At another point, she hides the dice down her bodice before entering the opium den, but soon afterward they are apparently stolen from her pocket when she never textually put them there. At Max’s casino, a suitcase and an entire collection of “her things” appear even though she fled without taking anything and never went back to retrieve it.
These details may sound small individually, but they happened often enough that I stopped trusting the text. Instead of staying immersed in the story, I was constantly trying to work out whether I had missed something or whether the book had simply forgotten what it had already established.
The larger continuity problem is Nina herself.
At the beginning, I liked her. She seemed capable, competent, cautious, and driven by survival. She was hiding a dangerous secret, protecting her mother, doing whatever she needed to do to stay alive, and clearly outsmarting the men in her world. But as the book continued, she became almost unrecognizable.
She swings from being obstinately independent to being completely at the mercy of the men around her. Her emotions jump from one extreme to another with very little development between them, and she repeatedly makes catastrophic decisions on a dime because her feelings get hurt and she chooses to react instead of asking a question, requesting clarification, or communicating with anyone.
She constantly acts to spite other people instead of making her own choices about who she is and what she actually wants. Then, once everything has gone to shit and she has (more often than not) needed to be saved, she acts as though nothing ever happened. The emotional whiplash is honestly borderline traumatizing for the reader.
That pattern happens over and over again. Nina misunderstands something, immediately assumes the worst, reacts at maximum intensity, and makes a decision that completely screws her. Then she learns nothing from it and does essentially the same thing again. There is no meaningful growth, self-awareness, or increasing understanding of herself or the people around her.
By the end, it felt less like Nina was a complicated or emotionally reactive character and more like the author changed her personality to create whatever conflict the current scene required. It genuinely felt as though the book did not know who its own main character was.
That also made the romance extremely difficult to believe.
I liked Max. His history of being experimented on as a child gives him darkness, trauma, and an interior conflict that made me want to understand him. His connection to the trials and the Cursed gives him an actual emotional and thematic relationship to the larger story. Granted, he was possessive, obsessive, and plenty of other things that many people would find questionable in a love interest, but I genuinely liked him.
What I never understood was why he thought Nina was such hot shit.
For roughly three quarters of the book, there is very little emotional intimacy or convincing development supporting their supposed connection. The book tells us that their bond is powerful and important, but it rarely shows us why. Nina’s reactions to Max shift from vaguely neutral to enormously positive or negative, yet there is no narrative progression building a foundation for either the relationship or the intensity of those reactions.
They fight, flirt, and then act as though nothing happened. In all honesty, it does not even qualify as a will-they-won’t-they. Their feelings seem to appear simply because the plot says it is time for them to appear.
The book also repeatedly mistakes vagueness for mystery. Nina keeps mentioning that people do not know “who she is,” and the story occasionally drops hints about her bloodline and abilities as though it is building toward some precise revelation. But the information is handled so unclearly that I often could not tell whether something was meant to be mysterious or was simply poorly explained.
Mystery should make me curious. This frequently just made me confused.
Even the action and character decisions often felt disconnected from the stakes the book itself had established. Max is preparing for a duel to the death with his brother, says he has no time to train, and then spends an hour teaching Nina a basic fighting stance so they can flirt in the ring.
After the fight, time is supposedly of the essence because they have to reach her mother before the experiment on the boat ends the next day, yet they take God knows how long to fuck in a slaughterhouse first—despite Nina constantly claiming that her mother is “the most important thing.”
Moments like that do not feel driven by character or survival logic. They feel like scenes the author wanted to include regardless of whether they made sense where they were placed.
That is what makes this so disappointing. There is a much better book inside this one.
The world has depth. The magic has consequences. The Cursed raise questions about personhood, exploitation, and who gets to decide what makes someone human. The trials suggest something brutal and institutional hidden beneath the mythology of the world. Nina’s father, the bloodlines, the Architect, and the experiments all point toward a story about inherited power and the way violence becomes buried inside systems people have accepted as normal.
I wanted answers about all of that.
But the continuity errors, unclear geography, underdeveloped romance, inconsistent characterization, and Nina’s complete lack of growth made the actual process of reaching those answers exhausting.
I normally finish books in one or two days. This took me well over a week, not because the ideas were too complex, but because the storytelling created so much friction. Curiosity about the world was doing all the work that character investment, romance, pacing, and narrative clarity should have been doing alongside it.
I finished wanting to learn more about almost everything in the world surrounding Nina while having absolutely no desire to spend another book inside her head.
That is a particularly frustrating place for the first installment of a series to leave me. Cannot recommend.
I feel like because this is SO hyped right now I had soaring expectations that were a bit unfair to the book. If I had found this on my own, with no expectations, I think I may have enjoyed it more. The writing is good, the world building expansive, and the characters (at least Carl) have depth. Some parts are a little too goofy for me and lose me a little. Also, some of the more action packed scenes that have a lot going on can be a bit hard to follow — I’m not sure that is the fault of the writing as much as just a lot of complex but extremely detailed things happening very quickly, and a lot of description around the mechanics of items and things that are a little hard for me to follow.
I do see lots of little crumbs that can lead to a super rich story in later novels, which I feel like is a hallmark of a good series.
Overall, this was a good book. It really was. I will be reading the second. It just wasn’t as mind bendingly, earth shatteringly incredible as everyone seems to be making it out to be. But maybe the series just gets better and better!
The concept here is what if when people hit a boundary they could potentially create two versions of themselves: one instance that goes, and one that stays. But it becomes so much more than tha: a narrative and commentary on cognitive dissonance, immigration rights, government censorship, and the principles of desire, knowing, and the self.
This was not a joyous read. A lot of it was filled with depressing reflections and realizations about the weaker parts of the self. Of humanity, in fact. But Kim does this very interesting technique with interspersing mythological and biblical references in short callouts, using their stories and analysis to punctuate the finer points of the story. It's a technique that could have felt heavy handed and overbearing, but for the most part felt really well executed and added to the story rather than pulled away from it.
YJ's final choice to offer for her to split him into the parts she wanted or needed so he could go along with her was the only thing that felt off to me. I feel she should have taken all of him. I understand the tactical advantage of leaving an instance of him there, but it felt like such a betrayal. Of him to himself for having endorsed that he was not enough, and been willing to let her choose what she wanted just to be with him. And of her for accepting that and splitting him in swain. After everything, you would think she would appreciate accepting someone in their entirety.
Overall this one was a real thinker I didn't want to put down.
I was so excited going into this after speeding through the first two. Unfortunately about 60% of this books feels like it could have been removed without impacting the story in the slightest. The Villain pushing her away to “protect” her ended up getting really tired. 2 books worth? Fine. But this third one, it was almost becoming malicious. He would fight like hell to keep himself from her, inevitably fall to his desire, and in doing so he's mentally promising himself that he will just hold onto the memory for tomorrow he will TRULY push her away. And at that point, it's like he's actively choosing to hurt her. I don't know what kind of delusion you have to envelop yourself in to believe that that's okay, but that was truly the most villainous thing he did, only thinking of himself in those moments and not of the inevitable pain he is actively choosing to cause her by being so fucking wishy-washy. The ending was great. So many little exciting reveals. But like I said, could have cut out 60% of this and achieved the same end without making me start to resent The Villain.
I had forgotten the bulk of what this story was about, having not read it in years, but this struck me as a true rendition of what it's like to be an unstable teenager: to have too much on your plate, to have had to deal with too much at too young an age, and to not be able to survive any longer. When you're that age you don't know any better than to keep pushing through. You don't know how to stop l, and think, and understand what you're dealing with isn't okay, and that you're not okay.There's a reason that kids act out when they're struggling, and this kid dealt with so much: death, and suicide, and abuse, and just not being able to belong. He's a smart kid. He told himself he was dumb because he just couldn't do it anymore.I remember now why they teach this in schools and why it's considered a classic. There are many parts that are very witty and very funny and make you laugh out loud. There are parts that you realize have become part of pop culture, phrases like “you're a gentleman and a scholar.” There are parts that are harrowing and deeply saddening, traumatic even.You live with Holden for just a couple of days but in that time you understand what he doesn't. You see him unraveling. You see that things have not been fair for him. You live it with him.
I really enjoyed this story and the characters inside it. It had very strong writing, an interesting world build, and a strong plot with a couple unexpected twists. The almost dystopia take of the corporatization of a colony was a bit mind boggling, but also clever. It didn't feel so far off from something humans would do, for space exploration to be a corporate affair. And if that was the case, and a colony was created off of the corporate model, I could see something like this world developing. Where work is life, and life is work. Where people must sacrifices themselves in the face of limited resources, and ritual around that made such an act sacred. When we switched to the apprentice point of view, it took me by delighted surprise. I unfortunately let myself think too much while reading that section and figured out the twist before I got to it. I think if I hadn't, it would have rated higher for me, because the story itself is so well developed and the plot has no holes. It did just make me a little sad though. I think this was a take on pragmatism and realism that wouldn't have allowed for the potential happy ending that could have been. And I understand that. But it did hurt for the company to win in the end. Truly the only thing you can control is yourself in any world, real or fictional.<\spoiler>
I really, really enjoyed this one. From the whimsical tone to the witty banter, the touch of fantasy onto of a unique take of the villain's perspective. It's always a little hard when two people are so clearly in love with each other, clear to everyone but them. But I felt like the inferiority each of them feels individually because of their own backstory and their own trauma made their various reasons for believing the other couldn't have interest in them actually plausible. It wasn't just mistaken romance, it was two broken people seeing the beauty in each other while simultaneously incapable of seeing it in themselves. There were plenty of twits, but I can confidently say I did not ONCE suspect the father as the traitor. Not once. To see him flip so blatantly, for him to admit to offering her up, prostituting her, as if it was a gift when he freely admits money was no problem. To make his family suffer for no reason, and somehow scorn them for the situation he put them in. God knows wha he did to her mother. But to be honest, none of it would have hit. None of it would have felt truly believable. If not for him admitting he had never been sick. That's what truly drove it home. It made it so you as the reader weren't sitting there questioning how this sweet old man could double cross to flippantly. It gave you all the history of who he was and what his character was that you needed to understand that he has always been this person, this monster. And you see it as she does; you feel the incredulousness and betrayal that washes over her as it washes over you too. I am a notorious twist predictor, and this was a delightful turn of events. I was truly horrified, gasping and covering my mouth in disbelief at the last 30 pages. This book got me. It could have so easily been another trite romantasy that just played yet another tired trope. But it wasn't. It was a unique take, and an enjoyable one at that. I'm reeling to read the rest of the series. Excellent work for her first book!
3.75 stars. I liked this one as a follow up to the main story. Set 5 years after Bad Blood, it was nice to see the group a little older, a little wiser, and further along in their various relationships and goals. I enjoyed revisiting the McBride case and finding yet another Natural forged in trauma. I appreciated the “twelve” theme and revisiting that time in each character's life to help us see how they came to be. I thought using the pov switch for that was an excellent touch. This felt more on point with her normal writing style and quality for me. Though the twist reveal was still a little rushed. I'm really looking forward to book 5 at the end of this year!
Truly this series was gripping. I could not guess so many of the twists. I think the pacing was a little off — some of the big reveals felt so fast paced I didn't have enough time for them to hit me before we were off to the next plot point.
I don't know how to feel about Cassie killing her mother and literally seconds later the FBI busting in to save them. It felt so pointless. Such a pointless death. If they had just talked for moments longer, she would still be alive. She had mere moments with her mother before losing her, again. They didn't have a chance to tell each other they loved each other or resolve anything. The whole book I was rooting for her to find her mom, to save her mom. And I guess that's the point. These books aren't happy little ending type books. They hold the tragedies inherent in reality; the FBI doesn't bust in to save you at just the right moment, preventing you from killing your mother to save yourself. That wouldn't actually happen. But still. Even though I don't expect her to write a happy ending, her being with her mom after wouldn't have been that. She had been tortured for years. She was mentally broken. Her mom would never have been able to come back from that. I guess the biggest kindness for her was to kill her before she had a chance to lose sight of the woman her mother was before. And then Nine being the sister of both Cassie and Veronica? Almost too convenient. Her shooting her father in the head? That one kind of makes sense. Once she knew who he was... I don't think she would have had anything but contempt for him. She would have switched on a dime after losing her friend. After learning he manipulated her for her entire life. But how can they possibly bring down this enormous organization? For each they kill, there is on before. I can't imagine this is a singular sect? I guess that the current apprentices are cut off... they've captured the Gen X layer for the most part... the younger ones may have a master still alive above them... 21 year cycles there may be 3 layers of masters? So a minimum of 27 masters, maximum of 7 apprentices, plus the Pythia, who is dead (and all other Pythias before her are obviously dead), and Nine (the older of which is dead, the younger of which alive, but who knows how many children were born and abandoned... every 6 years maximum means there could be 10? Beau is dead but how many others will be inspired to take up the cause? So potentially, with 6 captured masters, 3 dead masters, a dead apprentice, dead old nine, dead Pythia, and young nine being (hopefully) good, we have 18 potentially alive masters and 6 potentially alive apprentices? Who are likely intertwined at various levels of power? Assuming this isn't just the US branch but the entire organization. That's a lot of people to bring down. Without Nine they may be a bit fucked, but that seems like it would be possible to restart with the OG masters. And I'm confused why the director of the FBI and some apothecary lady from their hometown are both of this organization. Nine's town. Like Director Sterling said they're the most powerful people, but some bitch from down the street is on the panel? Also I get that her mom was directing things so like bringing in people they know makes sense. That's likely how they found Geoffrey. But every single killer is somehow related to Cassie? I don't guess a lot of these twists but even so I wonder about the qualitative value of it all. Also CeCe's “Natural” gift felt a little.. forced. The rest of their talents made sense based on who they are and what their upbringings and trauma was. The liar had to protect herself in a cult. The emotion reader had a father with a hairpin trigger. The profiles has a serial killer dad. The autistic is autistic. And Cassie clearly has something wrong at a genetic level — but also found her mom's crime scene at 12. But CeCe just like.. was good at art? And rich? And.. her mom had an affair.. and her parents didn't pay attention to her... so she can intuitively reconstruct faces? Like... what? That one doesn't really line up. And it's the first time we've had someone introduced in the same book. Everything else was so well laid before. I mean, Nightshade showing up in book 1 for like 10m randomly, and that not coming to light for two books? Genius. But it felt like her whole character was 1) a convenient way to solve the crime (both “who was burned” and “oh Director Sterling is a bad guy BIG TWIST”) and 2) give Sloan a romantic partner, because everyone else has partnered off. She was just a foil the story, a way to progress the plot. I didn't know her or care to know her. There was no depth (which until this point has been so incredibly characteristic of this author's writing style). Overall, this was a good book. It was a well paced and thought out end to a genius storyline. But it had some catches that made it feel rushed and tired. These kids will likely never recover from the trauma they've endured. But hopefully everyone trying to target Cassie is finally dead.
This one, in my opinion, has been the best in the series so far. Little puzzle pieces placed so early in the series coming to fruition in such shocking ways has been truly eye opening. I at first felt a little disappointed at guessing what I thought was the main twist. But the twists on top of that I never saw coming! So, so good.
I really enjoyed this sequel, though not quite as much as the first. Unfortunately I did guess all the twists in this one, but I did thoroughly enjoy the story getting there. These characters come alive on the page and the depth of the story is extremely gripping. So excited to see them have more autonomy in the next one!
3.25 stars. I read this series years ago and remembered it fondly, so wanted to read it again. I enjoyed this first book yet again, though it is much, much longer than I remember. I thought the writing was too, the characters were likable, and I appreciated the level of world building. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
3.75 stars. This is my first Nora Robert's book and o was delightfully surprised at how good it was. I may be partial to the obviously autistic main character, but I thought the story was really well balanced. There was the right amount of lead up that didn't feel like JUST setting the stage; there was a long arc and a short arc to follow; and the romance was natural and didn't feel contrived or forced. It had the right amount of thrill and crime and passion. Really enjoyed. If this is reflective of her work in general, I know why my mom constantly had one of her books in her hands my entire childhood.
1.5 stars. Just so incredibly predictable. I'm not a fan of the malicious unreliable narrator that's really just lying about the plot the whole time from the perspective of the person who KNOWS EVERYTHING BAOUT THE PLOT. Absolute least favorite “twist.” I don't find it clever for the twist to just be I lied to you via my own internal dialogue the entire book.Likely will not read another of her books.
3 stars even though this felt like fluff almost. After reading the afterword, it seems he needed to flesh out elven culture some, which makes sense. I am extremely biased because I love SAO, so I always rate these books high as I will take any bit of their journey before the 70th floor that I can. But I feel like until part two comes out, this arc feels a little hollow.
4.5 stars. This one surprised me. There aren't many twists that I can't guess and this one was entirely unexpected and done so, so well. The message of this book as the importance of protecting and experiencing stories really touched my heart. I will definitely be reading her other works, and have already recommended this one!
2.25 stars. This book felt like sitting at someone's kitchen table and hearing them tell you a story about a period in their life. This story wasn't it for me, but it was very well written and I know that others will find it very enjoyable. But I think at the moment I wanted something of a more active read, so it just didn't quite hit the way I wanted it to.
6 stars. I believe this is the best book I've read in 2026 so far.
This is an incredibly immersive story about hope and grief and belonging. It effortlessly weaves diverse experience through time and space, stitching together opposing worlds as we feel what the characters feel, and live those moment with them.
There is a section that talks about how each of us creates our own reality, the electricity flowing through our brains and body creating shifts that sometime exist in the collective, sometimes only for ourselves. You see those forces at work in this novel. You see and understand how the reality of each individual character within and between each area of time-space coalesce and differ from each other. See and understand how each reality is unique in that way, and come to appreciate the sense of belonging (or not belonging) that arises from it.
This story spoke to me in an unexpected way. And I believe will stay with me for a long time. The moment I finished, I wished I could start it again for the first time. An incredible debut work for Portia Elan. Even her Acknowledgements section had pieces that felt like poetry. The way she writes captures more than the circumstance of a moment, or the feelings of a character — they capture the ‘being' encapsulated within.
3 stars. I liked this but struggled with moving off the story of the original grace kids. I feel like I'm always a little bitter when an old set of characters I love get swept away for a new one in a reboot. But this was a nice little foray into “beyond” the spiderwick chronicles. For some reasons didn't click that they chose to publish the guide to protect it when the elves gave it back to the for safekeeping in book 5 — that they realized only hidden could it be used for evil alone. Something didn't quite sit right with that realization, felt like a betrayal of the actual words of the very literal elves when they returned it to them, specifically the Grace kids, for safekeeping. But I suppose that is the whole concept behind the books, that they brought it to the authors to publish. This book is a follow up in Florida with two newly step-siblinged children and their adventure into the world of faeries. I like how these books always tackle something complicated for young kids; the original series about grappling with their parents divorce, this one about a remarriage after the death of the boys mother. Those are hard, real topics. I do wonder if they hadn't gotten the sight tho, would they just have seen random fire? Would they have blamed it on an earthquake? Because they can see we understand how the story plays out but it being so easy for them to find makes me wonder how their whole entire world isn't constantly in chaos with how common angry faeries seem to be.
3.5 stars. This was a great end to the series. I think they sort of left it open for more tales, but never got around to it. This was the longest of the 8 books and it was grate to see the Grace kids working with our main characters to beat the odds yet again. I loved the art work in this, the growth, and am always appreciative that these books let these kids discover themselves in the middle of the chaos of their circumstance.