Misha
Gild was quite a ride and I was stranded, left without a saddle. While the description on Amazon does include a trigger warning for the monstrous things that are present in this story, the book (Kindle Edition) does not. I was unfortunate enough to not have seen the trigger warning when buying the book as it's hidden at the very end of the blur. Whoops!
For what it's worth Gild treats the subject matter well. It is not glamorizing sexual assault, it's very clearly written from a perspective of someone suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. The descriptors use could be less vulgar but that's more of a personal preference.
The problem of Gild is that it is an amazing story that has been butchered, cut apart, and strung up to look like erotica. All the fantasy aspects are for all intents and purposes useless. Removing all of the ‘spicy' elements would change nothing.
“The myth of King Midas reimagined.”
everything
Gild
Oh, If We Were Villains, thou hadst such boundless promise, yet alas, hast faltered, and now I cannot deem thee more than a tome bound in the chains of mediocrity's curse.
While I've always been quite critical of The Secret History regardless of how much I adore it, the genre it spawned is very much something I enjoy. I've known about If We Were Villains for a long time but held off until now. The reason being a class on Shakespeare that I've decided to undertake this semester. I thought it'd be fun to read this while weekly dissecting Shakespeare's plays. I was wrong.
If We Were Villains lacks character beyond the utter preposterousness of the principal characters. Shakespeare indeed is very cool but you don't need to quote him on every page during normal conversation.
The issue that I fear absolutely ruined the book for me was the lack of character for the Dellecher Shakespeare conservatory. It never felt like a real place with real people. The Secret History pushed my suspension of disbelief far with a class of students who study Greek and nothing else but to dedicate an entire course to Shakespeare and by the fourth year you're still on Julius Caesar is hilarious. Where are the lesser known plays? Do they really never do anything but study their lines and act? Why are all the plays portrayed as the most boring productions possible with nothing original? Less than a week ago I went to see a beautiful production of The Merchant of Venice that portrayed Antonio and many of the Christian characters as members of the Italian mob. That's what I'd expect them to be doing in their fourth year.
As many others pointed out the twist is predictable and taken right out of The Secret History but stripped of any semblance of making sense. The ending was poor.
Admittedly it has been a while since I binge-read the Shadow and Bone trilogy but I still remember, vividly, how adamant everyone was that Six of Crows is just the better, more mature version that improves upon almost every aspect of Shadow and Bone. I was excited to read it and so I bought it all at once alongside the first trilogy and at the first book of the next duology King of Scars. Back then, I didn't get around to reading this book but I did enjoy the first three. I found the Darkling to be a terrible name for a villain and every magic-user being called Greg was weird but funny.
Six of Crows disappointed me, greatly. For the first few hundred pages I've kept wondering just why but come the end of the second third it hit me - Six of Crows is an anime! There's Kaz Brekker, the criminal prodigy whom all fear, and Inej the Wraith who will stab and murder with supreme skill, and Jesper the Sharpshooter, and Nina a powerful Grisha, and Wylan the Demolitionist, and Matthias the SS Soldier Witch-Hunter.
Who would have thought that these seasoned veterans are all no older than 19. Kaz, the feared demon of the criminal world, is seventeen years old. There was no reason to make their ages so explicit. It did nothing for the plot besides breaking any sort of suspension of disbelief one might have. Kaz, from the first few paragraphs of his story, was at least in his late twenties by the way his point of view was presented. I could understand twenty-three but seventeen is too low. It does not work. The murderous Wraith is sixteen because she's just so special.
Besides being literal children they are all quite horrible people and no amount of sad backstory will make that okay.
I've come across people praising the worldbuilding and same as with the characters, I am not sure what kind of mass hallucination has most of the readership experienced but this ain't it. It's anime, again. The north is full of very gruff and evil people who love ice and everything with cold because obviously they do. It's so generic in so many ways and with the focus being much less on the powers of the Grisha that somewhat interesting aspect is completely gone.
The plot itself is predictable and not that engaging. Again, the anime-esque nature of the book shows with scenes upon scenes that come seemingly randomly recounting the POV character's backstory. I'm sure good 15% of the book are these sections, perhaps even more. Couldn't we have Kaz tell his sad backstory to Inej instead of being subjugated to the plot coming to a stop just to throw it on us? Anime, pure and simple.
I will not be reading The Crooked Kingdom.
This was definitely an improvement. Unlike [b:The Cruel Prince 26032825 The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air, #1) Holly Black https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1574535986l/26032825.SY75.jpg 45959123] it does not spend 120 pages on meaningless nonsense. The writing is improved, Jude is... alright, I guess, and Cardan became the ‘I was abusive because I was abused' trope but, same as with the first book, I can forgive that. It's a fun trope.The plot here is actually important. Jude can be as wince-worthy self-poisoning anime protagonist as she likes and it won't stop the plot from being fun. Mithridatism might be a real thing that can work but it really doesn't need to be mentioned so often.Honestly, I have so much less to say about The Wicked King. It was fine. The definition of fine. It improved a lot, it got original, the political schemes were not totally stupid even if the whole premise for it is extremely non-sensical because Jude is very stupid but I was able to suspend my disbelief enough.Indeed Cardan never got any comeuppance for his abuse of Jude in the first book. Instead she comes to love him for whatever reason and he continues to be enamored by her even though he hates her and she did make him her magical slave. It's a very toxic relationship and I wish the book acknowledged that and had them work through it (hopes for The Queen of Nothing).I do wish the cast got a little more character development. The ‘Court of Shadows' is a bunch of names that attempted to have character and then failed. I really wouldn't be able to tell The Roach and The Ghost apart without the text specifically saying who's who. Maybe that's just me...Very optimistic for the next book. If it improves upon The Wicked King the same that improved upon The Cruel Prince it just might be a genuinely good book!
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
Oh... no. My sweet dark baby of a book, why do you hurt me so?
I so rarely read a sequel that I enjoy less than the first book. For all its flaws Dark Rise was a great book with a fantastic ending and a twist that left me wanting more. It was me placing an order for some tasty, spicy food on DoorDash. Dark Heir is the 42 minutes I spend looking at the app waiting for the food to arrive and it ends just as the driver rings the doorbell.
Dark Rise made so many promises with that ending and the sequel just did not bother to deliver. It makes so many questionable choices. Dark Rise had the terribly boring villain Simon to deal with and it ended with making him disappear. Awesome! Now we get to focus on the Dark King returned... but nope. Instead we get Simon's daddy Sinclair who was mentioned in Dark Risetwice. We get Mrs. Duval who can control Lions who was never mentioned! Our gang travels to Italy to deal with matters never before mentioned.
It reads well and I love these characters but what is this? This went in completely the wrong direction to the first book. It had nothing interesting, the ending was... nothing. I demand the book I was promised, Cat.
I don't often re-read books and I seldom even want to do so. C.S. Pacat's Dark Rise is a beautiful exception. I loved it when I first read it and I love it still.
The book's not perfect by any means. Personally, I find the most to dislike in some of the generic and uninspired writing especially when it comes to titles.
I cannot return when I am called to fight So I will have a child.
Trying to look objectively upon my time reading this book, I'd give it 3 stars. Considering just the sheer enjoyment of it then 4 stars.
There is little to be said about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. It's a fine book that is entertaining, that doesn't take itself too seriously, and is just fun. It's a beach read in its purest form and exactly the kind of a book I needed to get out of my reading slump. The writing is simple but it has some really good, quotable lines.
“And what does it meant that we have not spoken in a decade but I still hear your voice in my head every day.”
“I love you too much to let you live only for me.”
Out of all 40+ books on my TBR for 2024 ‘Hell Followed With Us' was perhaps my most anticipated read. It was for sure in the top five! I had seen mentions of it on social media, I saw the author's accounts.
But oh God, I hated it.
Before this review is condemned as one of an alt-right cisgender white straight man (out of all these I am white and somewhat a man), I want to address the progressive aspects of the book.
It's terrible. I am sorry but that is the truth. It reads like the author going through a checklist to make sure that he's included everyone. I love that Benji ends up in an LGBTQ+ Youth Center; it allows for a cast of very diverse characters to exist naturally.
The book makes it unnatural. It just reads strange. It reads like Tweets, not like actual narration or dialogue.
“So yeah, nice to finally meet you. Xe/xem pronouns.”
I go through the rest of the set: xe, xem, xyr, xemself. I read about neopronouns in a book Dad smuggled from the burn pile of confiscated items at New Nazareth.
Said I was making a mockery of the trans movement for using ‘fake pronouns,' and I nearly strangled him.
the plot
I feel like I've dreamed the beauty that was [b:Divine Rivals 62796217 Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1) Rebecca Ross https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1703064662l/62796217.SY75.jpg 94100483]. So much magic of that first book is lost. The first was truly a work of the divine, a beautiful love story that touched my own heart, and the second really is ruthless in how it falls flat.Not only engages in the most egregious trope of all, it does it for nothing. There is no reason for Roman's amnesia. It is needless padding that feels like the author screaming at us, “DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER DIVINE RIVALS?” A terrible decision that made me want to put the book aside and never pick it up again.In the first book, I thought Enva & Dacre were being set up as a very clear ‘there is evil on both sides' lesson. In Ruthless Vows I expected Roman to see Dacre as the more sympathetic side while Iris has faith in Enva. This would be a wedge driven between them until the monstrous nature of both gods would be revealed at which point Roman & Iris would use their experience with writing to publish and spread the truth of the two deities.Nope. Dacre is less than one-dimensional. He's not even threatening! Enva let thousands die in her name even though should have ended his life! For some reason the book never really condemns her for her inaction. One might think this review spends too much time discussing Dacre & Enva but, well, so does the book. So much of it are chapters in which Roman & Iris barely exist as characters. They are separated and the story is needlessly continuing that separation. There were numerous instances for them to reunite yet they stupidly do not take it.Still, the prose was as good as in the first book, and I do enjoy the characters even if they are there so very little. I feel bad that Forest never got a proper arc of his own and the book discards him as a nameless tertiary character. I still love Roman & Iris.And I still feel sad that I'll never feel a love like theirs.
How I yearn to experience love as pure as this.
I've often contemplated this loneliness of mine. Books have been an escape and now my broken self finds solace in stories like this. It is a painful solace that it brings but the closest thing to a peace of mind that I can realistically hope for.
Divine Rivals checks all the right boxes. It is beautifully written and even my most desperate attempts to find something not-so-great fail to find anything but a few very minor things. The book's premise - two people exchanging letters while one is unaware who the other is - is open to so many terrible clichés but none are here. It is used well. I can honestly say that it is very much believable.
The entire love story, from the start to the end, it is believable. Devoid of context it may seem as two teenagers rushing into things but there's a war, there is little time, there are tragedies all around. Love is found everywhere, even in the trenches.
I also have to bring up, again, the writing. The book is infinitely readable. Forty-two chapters and an epilogue allow for the whole story to flow so beautifully. When I had the time and energy to actually sit down and read, I'd struggle to put it down.
Moving to [b:Ruthless Vows|193375634|Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment #2)|Rebecca Ross|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1697557788l/193375634.SY75.jpg|94100488][b:Ruthless Vows|193375634|Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment #2)|Rebecca Ross|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1697557788l/193375634.SY75.jpg|94100488] right away!
When did it happen? Or has it always happened? Like your victory, love spreads back through time. It claims our earliest association, our battles and losses. Assassinations become assignations. There was, I am sure, a time I did not know you. Or did I dream that me, as I've often dreamed of you?
Yet further proof that time travel is a curse that does not serve anything at all. This is How You Lose the Time War is a great book that promises much and delivers nothing at all. I can only echo other reviewers by saying that I have no idea what was the point of good 90% of the book.
Two time travelers who exchange letters in the most non-sensical way while on opposing sides of a war. It's a premise that should be fantastic and with unlimited potential but it is not utilized well at all.
Time travel is stupid and here it's even Jupiter because it go so much stupider. They travel not just through time but also into alternate realities. That's the worst part of time travel. The only way to actually do time travel is like ‘Doctor Who' and just say that time fixes itself when something is altered or changed.
The plot itself makes no sense and what the two agents do is of little consequence. I wanted to just skip whole sections of the book because of this.
Still it delivered a nice love story of Red & Blue. Next time, I'd appreciate characters having names, not colors.
So This Is Ever After is a great sequel to a book that does not exist.
Perfectly serviceable fun is the tale of Arek, Matt, and a rag tag group of cardboard cutouts with varying surface-level complexities yet seldom any real depth. The book begins at the end but not at the end of any good fantasy novel, it starts at the end of a generic fairytale where the Vile One is slain by a teenage chosen one.
The whole plot rests on the worst trope imaginable: miscommunication. I think we can all get over even the tropes we dislike when they are done well, in a believable way. Not the case here what-so-ever. The hoops the plots jumps through just to allow itself to transpire is laughable. From the first few chapters you know the entire ending.
There is a book missing. A whole book of this group of rag tag adventurers that go together to defeat the villain. Essentially, this book is missing Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. We know nothing of these characters and we learn very little of them. This needed to cut out 100 pages of nonsense and replace it with 150 pages of the actual adventure. There are realistically no stakes.
The idea of exploring what happens after the death of the villain is sound and in fantasy seldom tackled. Issues arise when there is no actual difficulty to establishing a new monarchy and regime of King Arek who is bound to the throne by way of happenstance.
‘So This Is Ever After' is what happens after the disasterous ending of the ‘Game of Thrones' TV show! Everything just works...somehow. A person in charge of the money can be a peasant, they definitely have experience. Good that the Big Bad filled the castle with gold else there would be stakes outside of Arek's curse.
The plot hinges on Arek being bound to the throne of Ere. He has to find a spouse by his eighteenth birthday else he pulls Marty McFly and vanishes away. This makes no sense at all for several reasons that sadly reside in the Kingdom of Spoilers.
It could also be circumvented very easily.
“Dear [character], for the sake of political alliance and my own survival, I shall marry you. Although expect no love from me. Thank you.
at all
Chickpea
So This Is Ever After
love
Oh Babel, you book of towering ambition, how have you faltered in your lofty pursuits, leaving us ensnared in the web of unmet expectations.
Venturing to the fields of semi-fictional Oxford are four heroes so alike in character. The protagonist Robin from China, his best friend Ramy from India, Victoire from Haiti, and stupid Letty, a woman from Britain. For the setting of the 19th century Oxford, they are truly a cosmopolitan bunch. It is commendable that the protagonists of the story are in some way a minority. Except for Letty who is just a woman and who even cares about her.
I am disappointed. The highs Babel could have reached were spectacular to image yet it crumbled and no hope remains.
For years, I've firmly held a belief that endings are paramount. The issue that arises is that endings are emotionally charged moments where the more empathetic readers, like myself, often falter and ignore the flaws of the book.
Well, not here. I cannot ignore the 300 pages during which I've found myself bored out of my mind. Nothing was happening, nothing of consequences anyway, and all that broke out the monotony of the meandering plot were the ample footnotes reminding me that indeed the British Empire was racist.
I understand the point Kuang wanted to make and I think that if I were not an undergraduate student of English Philology (a course that combines history of Anglo-American literature with English linguistics, and translation) I would enjoy this much more.
The issues of colonialism, its history, and many of the books that are mentioned in the footnotes have been known to me previously. I doubt the general audience is going to be reading any of them anyway. It felt like the work of a post-graduate student who really wants to show off their work. I've seen people praise Kuang for the research she did for Babel, but I disagree. It was her academic research that borne Babel. All those footnotes are a way to combine the two.
There is little to say to the plot without entering the territory of spoilers. It drags on at first and then jumps through hoops to get characters where they are meant to be.
Here I wish to refer to the incident of professor Lovell's death. It speaks well to the nature of academics that they'd try to lie and pretend the professor's still alive. The book even somewhat acknowledges this but it never goes anywhere. I firmly believe they could have gotten away with it if they played their cards right. Instead the book just wants them to be on the run so they are on the run almost instantly. There are other instances: Letty's betrayal, the explosion in Canton, the pathetic occupation of Babel.
There is very little character to those characters which is also a shame.
The magic system based on the missing meaning between two words when translated is genius. I genuinely have not seen a more unique magic system. The sad reality is that it played a tertiary, if even that, role in the narrative. It was seldom utilized and never to its utmost potential.
The progressive thought is very apparent in this book. I agree with it wholeheartedly, as all should. The issues arises when it comes to Letty. For me Letty was a chance to look into the mind of a white person born in privileged and just why they won't give up their lives for a cause.
Instead Letty is the stupid white rich girl who doesn't understand anything. When she helps them whenever she can, when she almost gets raped and is blamed for it and doesn't walk away, when they insult her all the time, it all was working to something and then the book just chose not to go that way.
Yes, I know the white experience is not the point of this book, but Letty was there. Also, I would have loved to see one of the foreign students fully embrace Babel, to become a lapdog for the millionaires.
But this was a surface level exploration of an uprising. It was over and done in a lower number of pages than spend described their meals and extravagant halls.
I still think that Babel will become a classic in its own right in due time. It has things to say and that is good because I'd rather see them said badly than not at all.
While [b:Legends & Lattes 61242426 Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1) Travis Baldree https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1654581271l/61242426.SY75.jpg 94968745] was a fun, cozy low-stakes adventure that had missed its potential by an inch, Bookshops & Bonedust missed it by good ten feet.Prequels are boring when they were not planned. Viv, in Legends & Lattes, admits to being quite the bookworm but that's all this book has going for it. The characters, the adventures, antagonists, nothing from this book is mentioned in the first one. It makes for a very boring read because I know that these characters will disappear from the face of the Earth. What's worse is that many of the people Viv meets here could have been a help in establishing her coffee shop, or at the very least she should have stopped by after retiring.Again, we are with Viv who is a bloodthirsty orc yearning for a fight. She gets injured and has to stay in an ugly little coastal town. Inexplicably this town with seemingly few dozen citizens has a bookshop run by a ‘ratkin' who occasionally drops a vulgar term. While the previous book focused on the cozy, low-stakes theme of it all, for some reason Bookshops & Bonedust chooses to have stakes higher than Legends & Lattes. I cannot understand why. It's such a strange switch from an angry elf who wants an allegedly magical rock to a necromancer.There is a romance which I've forgotten about almost entirely. This should have been the focus! A cute cozy romance in a bookstore. I loved the owner of the titular bookshop Fern but I'd much prefer if the romance was between Viv and her while they rummage around in books and discover fun secrets.A step down from the first book. The Epilogue is nice but only if there is a sequel coming.
There is a definite uniqueness that can be found in the sub-genre of ‘cozy fantasy' yet, I am astounded that ‘Legends and Lattes' did not really reach the heights it could.
Based on the cover and premise alone, I had presumed this story to be all about building up the coffee shop. Struggling to obtain materials, workers, beans, machinery. This story is not that. There are minimal stakes and they do not originate from the struggle of running a business.
We follow Viv, an orc who is just tired of adventuring on her quest to starting her own coffee shop. From the very start even the least attentive reader will question just how is the book going to tackle coffee production in very generic medieval setting.
You would be then surprised to find that the book does not bother addressing any of that. Everything is a gnomish invention! Not just a coffee press, or something absolutely imperative to coffee-making but air conditioning too is invented as a no big deal.
For the sake of being able to fulfill this adorable coffeeshop AU style story, I can excuse how it goes about it all.
What I cannot get behind is the ease at which things happen. Everything is cozy and comfy but everything is also too easy. One of their first ever customers just so happens to be a genius baker. It's a little too contrived for my liking.
The progression of it all also feels like a video game. Chapter by chapter they gain experience in running their shop and so they unlock cookies, ice drinks, and so on. At start it feels like a nice montage of sorts showing the coffeeshop's progression but it overstays its welcome.
There is an antagonist and it's a terribly boring, and tired, run-of-the-mill scorned former coworker looking for a magical stone. Nothing much to be said there. The antagonist is a cog that produces the most minuscule of stakes.
Overall, it is a good book. I liked it. It provided a good start to 2024 for me. I do hope there will be a sequel.
It's hard to judge and rate the classics but rating them anything below 3 stars only shows how many people truly, genuinely need to read more. High school did not ruin your love for reading, your unwillingness to be challenged did.
Is The Scarlet Letter written in an obtuse way? Yes. Which is why it must be read with consideration for the intent of the author and the time in which it was written.
‘The Scarlet Letter' is hugely critical of the Puritans and could easily be rewritten to be a ‘girlboss' YA novel of half the length with none of the depth. If that is what you seek then maybe you should consider why and do something to challenge yourself.
All the men were bastards. There was no good male character in this book but perhaps the narrator.
It is pretty much the same as the first book. There are numerous outright impossible coincidences where the main characters meet the protagonists of They Both Die at the End. Honestly in some places it takes away from the story as a huge WINK WINK from Silvera to remind us that They Both Die at the End exists.
The story is okay but it's genuinely just the same as the first book. It's all about accepting death in a book twice as long (for some reason) with a predictable twist and ending. The story is essentially this:
See I thought, given that Valentino gets the call really early in the book, there is going to be some fun twist. Maybe he won't be the one to die as it's established Death-Cast is not perfect missing 12 people who ended up dying.
Nope. He dies and gives Orion, a stranger, his heart. I am all for romance and finding love on one's last day like in They Both Die at the End but this was a little silly.
The biggest missed opportunity is Dalma. She is upset that Valentino leaves the hospital and that Orion essentially tells her to F-off so the two boys can hang out (which is a hugely a-hole thing to do to your best friend/sister who has always been there for you). I thought that it would be Dalma causing Valentino's death in some malicious way to ensure that Orion gets his heart.
Then there is Scarlett who is a nothing character. When it was revealed that Death-Cast can make mistakes I thought “AHA! Maybe the ‘first to die at the end' is not going to be either of the boys but her, or Silvera will switch it up!” - NOPE. What you think is going to happen on PAGE 1 is going to happen in the end.
The abusive landlord being the cause of Valentino's death is beyond lame. That was supposed to be a red herring, Adam! COME ON
This book was incredibly disappointing. The premise had so much potential, and I started with high hopes, but it fell flat.
April is deeply flawed. Trauma doesn't excuse one's actions. They are contextual but you don't get to act horribly to people just because you experienced something horrible. She is horrible. She never faces any consequences for anything she does.
Men in the story are depicted in the most stereotypical, almost cartoonish manner. One male character, in particular, is portrayed so poorly it reads like a summary of a trope than a character in published novel.
He suggests that two instances of sexual harassment differ in severity.
‘Having your arse pinched is not the same as being, like, violently raped.'
...
I'm just saying, there is a spectrum to these things. You can't lump in something like pinching an arse with something more damaging.
exactly
He sits back, puffing his chest, spraying his alpha scent over me like a skunk that's been stamped on.
I hate men.
This is a weird one but my gf is being really offish because the other morning she woke up to find me having sex with her. I thought it was a sexy way to wake her up but she said it's made her feel a bit strange. I'm sorry cos i didn't mean to upset her but i also think shes overreacting a bit. I wouldnt mind if she woke me up with a blowjob would i? How can i make her see that its not a big deal?
I hope you die. I hope you fucking die... Go die now please, you pathetic cunt of a human being.
Of course he's fucking gay, but it's a start.
born
This is a book of privilege. A clearly high class teenager is struggling with high school to get accepted into one of the most privileged universities in the world. Yikes! Am I supposed to feel sympathy for him?
Everything is an utter disaster. There romance is weird and I did not feel the two of them as a couple at all. The high school where everyone is so stupidly smart that they take multiple AP classes (yet another stupidity of the American educational system) is just bizarre.
Sook, Ariel's best friend, is even worse. Her privilege manifests in not wanting to go to an Ivy League college because her parents did and she wants to be a musician.
I know... I know...
This is all real. 100% There are privileged brats that are like this but something being true to reality doesn't mean I am going to root for them. This book made me actively hate the protagonist and most of the cast except for Malka. Even Ariel's parents are just stupid.
Nope.
0% sympathy.
Also the CONSTANT references to Harry Potter in an LGBT book is just disgusting. I had to check when this was published and nope this was well in time for it to be clear that Harry Potter being mentioned would be yikes.
The extra star is for relatability. Struggling with school is rough. Most people experience it. Most people aren't secure, applying to guaranteed-wealth colleges, and they aren't absolutely a-holes to everybody around them...
Now this was fun! I did not expect this to be sci-fi(ish) so it being revealed as one surprised me in the best of ways. I did enjoy the story even though it was a little ‘eh' at times. Todd was fantastic as a little bratty protagonist and Violet was the best.
There was some potential left wanting here. I still don't understand where Prentisstown got thousands of people but that's such a minor complaint.
My first DNF.
What an utter disappointment this book's been. I cannot for the love of me understand how could anyone compare this to Lord of the Rings. The Priory of the Orange Tree just vomits names and characters and POVs at the you and expects you to remember everything. There is no main character, there are dozen and a half plot-lines without any distinction as what is important and what's secondary.
Labeling chapters as a cardinal direction was the stupidest choice I've ever seen. The approach of “Chapter 1” or named chapters is fine. A Song of Ice and Fire's approach of naming chapters after the POV character would be fantastic here as the sheer amount of characters you go through is staggering at times.
I've had easier time reading DUNE, the Silmarillion, or any literary classic. Joyce's Ulysses would probably keep me entertained better than this. Not that I hate it but it's presented terribly. The writing is weird, the characters are not memorable what so ever besides a few of them but by virtue of the multiple scattered POVs it's impossible to root for any of them (Except Sulyard who is killed "off-screen" WHAT THE HELL?
I've gone through some 400 pages of this and I can't stomach another 400. Nope! I'm sorry but not only this is nowhere near Lord of the Rings, this is plain sub-par run of the mill fantasy.