KayTo

I fully fucking loved this. Cara's a hard character, like the whole world(s). Really enjoyed all of the nature/nurture, alt-timeline play, trust and misconceptions... and I fucking loved that Cara is just bad at sex work. She had a lot of great character traits, but that one was my favorite recurring one.

Would absolutely read more by Johnson – this was gritty and fantastic.

Liang deftly created grey characters and captured all the machinations of men in power (or wanting power). And my god, the way she played with the ideas of nurture and betrayal and the us/them mentality - I honestly found myself deeply upset with the final choice of the main character (I wanted so badly for her to actually understand and internalize the fact that they were all just people, not inherently monsters simply because their leaders were - and maybe not even their leaders all were without the possibility of redemption).

I kept thinking, "how the heck is he going to stick this landing?" And he DID.

Loved the epic meandering storytelling (not sure how Landry put it exactly). Loved all the allusions to other things (MZD's other works, but also art and literature and mythology). Loved how everyone had a very specific death, and yeah, to encounter all those by the end of the book, it's like, okay, death is unique but also mundane.

Only one death was contradicted (that I noticed, because it happened within the same 2-page spread, which made me think, shit, was that intentional to show she was an unreliable narrator after all?). Only one big issue - Kalin never having a happy ending outside of his family. That's sad to me.

Otherwise, I'm so glad I took my time (but also so glad to be back to book monogamy!!).

Fully liked this one again (no weird issues with one of the mains). I can't say I enjoyed the use of "sweatheart" (whyyyyyy use a pet name thing???), but otherwise, solid.

I checked this out from the library simply because it was available and I'd seen it so hyped. Turns out I really really loved the writing. Yeah, a bit ridiculous, and yes, maybe some people who have had suicidal ideations would think this is a blase take, but... I thought it was pretty great. All it took was less than a week in a different place to allow multiple characters to come to terms with aspects of themselves that they'd been afraid to confront. I love that simplicity - and truly, the wit was just so great.