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4.5 starsThis book restored my faith in Megan Whalen Turner. After [b:A Conspiracy of Kings 6527841 A Conspiracy of Kings (The Queen's Thief, #4) Megan Whalen Turner https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1295475418l/6527841.SY75.jpg 6719799], I was unsure of her ability to recapture the magic of Books 2 & 3, but she successfully did so here. It's still not quite as good but it very nearly is. Kamet is as complex and compelling a character as Eugenides and Attolia. Unlike Sophos, I wasn't bothered by his narrative.TL;DR: Megan Whalen Turner restored my faith in these characters. In Book4 it was hard to tell the difference between them and their enemies but in this book, it once again became clear why they were the ones I was rooting for and not the Medeans. I was also reminded of why I didn't mind Eugenides' more cruel actions in Book 2 & 3, while being disturbed by Sophos'. While Gen is often manipulative, he is never overtly violent. He also always tempers his more cruel actions with kindness and the acknowledgement of his own wrong. In [b:The King of Attolia 40159 The King of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #3) Megan Whalen Turner https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1293505327l/40159.SY75.jpg 847545], when he arrests Sejanus and exiles Dite in the fall of Erondites, he feels remorseful for their personal destruction but acknowledges that it was a necessary evil. “I'm sorry, Dite.” Dite shrugged away the apology. “You have spared my brother when you could have killed him and you have offered me an escape from the cesspit of my family and this court. You know what it means to me, to make music in the court of Ferria. You've put a purse and an impossible dream in my hand. I don't know why you should apologize.” “Because I am exiling you, Dite. I intend to raze your patrimony and salt its earth. You emphatically do not need to thank me.”“It isn't revenge, Sejanus,” said this new incarnation of the king. “I wouldn't destroy an entire house to destroy one man. But I would destroy a man to destroy a house. Your brother will be exiled, your house will fall, not because I happen to hate you, but because Erondites controls more land, and more men, than any four other barons, stacked together and has proved to be dangerous over and over. Its very existence is a threat to the throne. It will not survive,” he said again. Also, we never see him execute anyone on-page, we are vaguely aware that he will have to as king ( he says so over and over again), but we never see it happen. In fact, we see him pardon people who likely should according to the traditions of that time, have been executed.In the same way, when Kamet arrives he apologises to him for taking away his dream of wielding immense power as the emperor's head slave. He said, “I've taken something from you that I had no right to take. As Laela did. I hope you will forgive us both.” .As Relius said “He's very tenderhearted,” said Relius. “He'll feel quite bad about it as he cuts you up into little pieces and feeds you to wolves.” . Perhaps as a reader, it made it easier to swallow Gen's occasional cruelty because it was so often tempered with kindness. But I also like to think that until Book 4, it had always seemed neither unnecessarily violent nor cruel. In this book, I returned to feeling like in a cruel and often barbaric world, our characters were doing the best they could to cause as little harm as possible.
This book had a nice, quirky concept but its execution was weak.
Our protagonist is informed of his impending death and offered a deal with the devil: for every extra day he is alive, he needs to choose something that will totally disappear from the world. From this setup, I was expecting to read heart-wrenching moral dilemmas about the ethics of making things disappear for the whole world while wanting to eke out a few more moments out of life. I also thought I would be getting a deep exploration of grief when confronted so directly with one's own mortality. Instead, it was pretty blah.
The main character is selfish and apathetic and doesn't seem to consider any opinions, thoughts or feelings outside of his own when choosing the things that can disappear. Granted, by the end, the devil is the one choosing which things disappear (no surprise here, he is the devil after all). However, even then he should have considered what it would mean when he accepted the bargain. For example, when he is considering whether or not to make movies disappear, he doesn't seem to think about what that absence would mean for his ex-girlfriend - who loves movies so much she now lives above a cinema. What would the absence of movies mean for her? Will she forever feel incomplete? He neither considers no cares about what the answers to these questions are. The protagonists self-centredness would be okay if the book was seeking to highlight how inherently selfish humans really are, but by the end, we are supposed to buy the idea that humans are actually selfless because the protagonist cannot bring himself to make cats disappear. However, even that final decision is selfish, he doesn't decide to keep cats around because he's thinking of other people, he seems to do it because of the sentimental value cats hold for him . Besides, he hardly seems remorseful for the other things he made disappear.
Additionally, there seem to be no real-world implications for the things that disappear. How did the world not come grinding down to a halt when the clocks disappeared. What happened to all the people who worked in phone manufacturing, or in the movie industry, or even in the clock industry. Millions of people must supposedly have woken up unemployed. How did the world simply go on, when big changes had been made. I think this concept would have worked better if each bargain gave him an additional 2 months - 1 year, then he could really sit with and consider the impacts of his decisions, see how the world was different because of the self-interested choices he had made.
This book promised to deliver one man's journey of self-discovery, but in my opinion, it fell short.
I know it's medieval fantasy but the age gap between the hero and the object of his affection really creeped me out, considering she was also kind of his charge. Couldn't finish it.
Can we please reserve the cartoon covers for light, swoony romance?!? Because this was definitely not that. It struck me more as literary fiction with some romantic elements thrown in and I did not enjoy the reading experience at all. I read the first few chapters, saw the direction it was going in and quickly skimmed the rest. I am so happy I didn't spend time finishing this book.Much like [b:People We Meet on Vacation 54985743 People We Meet on Vacation Emily Henry https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618913179l/54985743.SX50.jpg 67832306], this is a story about two people who have been in love with each other for years, during which time they are in relationships with other people. The difference between the [b:The Roughest Draft 57933316 The Roughest Draft Emily Wibberley https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622091718l/57933316.SX50.jpg 77336310] and [b:People We Meet on Vacation 54985743 People We Meet on Vacation Emily Henry https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618913179l/54985743.SX50.jpg 67832306], is that the former spends a lot of time on the MCs relationships with other people. Thus, we are forced to reckon with the betrayal of their love and it really dulled the “romance” of the book for me. If this book had been marketed as literary fiction, I would have gone in with different expectations and probably enjoyed it for what it was. As it stands, I am a moody reader who was hoping for light, swoony romance and was instead hit with this. I just wish this book had been marketed as what it was