Misha

Contrary to what I'm seeing I enjoyed this much more than [b:Shadow and Bone 10194157 Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1) Leigh Bardugo https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1339533695l/10194157.SX50.jpg 15093325]! It still falls into the nice box of a very nice albeit super typical YA fantasy except just a tad bit better all thanks to Nikolai! He is the best, he is fantastic. There were some things I didn't fully expect at the start and it was fantastic revisiting some of the locals of Shadow and Bone.The worst part is Mal which is about as an unpopular statement as love for bacon. The other problems are the “YA” part of the series. Alina is great but she's also such a typical “not like the other girls” protagonist that it hurts to read. The jealousy both Mal and her showcase is pretty childish. I was alright with it in Shadow and Bone as that was their introduction but here Alina is THE SUN SUMMONER and should know a bit better. Final problem is the lack of worldbuilding. The Grisha powers are still unexplained beyond a simple “lights, oh also there are mirrors” but it's fine, I don't really mind that.I really liked Siege and Storm! It's not quite 3 stars but not 4 either (half-stars please GR!) but thanks to Nikolai being awesome I'm giving it 4!

This is a definite 5/5 yet I just didn't have fun in many parts of this one. It's hard to say why too! Ugh... The start drags on a bit. Once it gets to the romance part and then the spectacular ending it gets ten times better.

Felt sad afterwards but didn't cry. Mainly because I know the Illiad so the ending wasn't really a surprise.

Also Patroclus is precious and it's worth reading just for him.

This series has been on my shelf for years, and only now have I gotten around to it. A friend of mine, a bookish little devil themselves, chose to cosplay Cardan, and I just could not resist a book with a cute elven prince.

I expected a very different book.

What I found amidst these 300 or so pages was not something I disliked; on the contrary, I had a lot of fun with the latter third of the book. I even enjoyed some of the beginning. It's that middle section that feels wasted and could have been utilized better.

The Folk of the Air isn't fantasy in the sense that we understand today. Its first paragraph mentions a taxi and a car. This is that kind of book. You know the kind. The ‘hidden world' with super special people who live unseen by the stupid worthless humans. I will forever damn her books for making this trope so much more prominent.

Sadly, this setting plays no significant role at all. There is no reason whatsoever for the human world to be ours, to be modern. It could have been about a kingdom of humans and the land of faeries, but for some reason, we need mentions of Target and the United States.

Jude, as the protagonist, is weak. She's also extremely wince-worthy.

And before you say anything else, I was good at it.

I've learned from Madoc and...

fairies cannot lie

If anything, Gideon the Ninth was fun! I genuinely had a lot of fun reading this book and given it's all dark and filled with death and so many skeletons I'm a bit perplexed to admit it true.

There are a few gripes I had with Gideon though. First and foremost: Charles Stross' quote on the cover of my reading “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!” is damn misleading. Neither Gideon nor Harrow are confirmed lesbian but their relationship can be seen as entirely platonic. I definitely wouldn't count this as an LGBT book by any means.

My second gripe is the sheer number of characters. There's seventeen characters. They're just not introduced well. For most of them their introduction is quite... swift and then they're mentioned only somewhat rarely. Their names aren't exactly easy to remember too. Then, in some instances, the narration refers to them only as “the Eight” or “the Fourth” or their first/last name and it's a hot mess.

And the third, final gripe of mine is just how much downtime there was. So many pages were empty of dialogue and relegated to bear nothing but tired descriptions that went on for far too long. Even the fight scene at the end was maybe a page or two too long. It never got to the Lord of the Rings levels of almost pointless descriptions but it did make some chapters feel a bit... boring.

The characters, those that stick, were fantastic! Gideon was great but my favorite was Harrow for whatever reason. (I tend to be the caster and Gideon's anything but that.)

Anyway, four stars! Definitely enjoyed reading it. Took my ±9 days to finish and never felt like a chore.