Kait

As a fantasy story, I think this sorely underdelivered. There are two countries, about which we get no background or cultural information at all. For a lot of the book, that's all we know. We don't even get any background information about our MCs. What was Damen's relationship with his brother like before? Was their mother ever around? Did he have any supporters in Akielos?

We do get a lot of information about the Veretian Court, and that's all. We are told what the slaves wear, how they should act, and their expectations. How did Vere come to this cultural norm? We don't know. We do learn about naked wrestling where the loser is forcibly penetrated, so… that's something.

This book was short, and I'm well aware that this whole setting and idea is window dressing for non-con and bondage. It could've been expanded into something more with just a little more effort. I'm going to use Kushiel's Dart as an example, even though I really didn't like that book either. But it was kind of the same idea but a little more powerful and thematic and without the pervasive humiliation kink.

I found Laurent to be uninteresting. He's hyped up as this bad dude, but he doesn't really do anything the whole time. Yeah he gets Damen flogged but he immediately gets his comeuppance for that. This dilemma that the book informs us about where Laurent needs to treat Damen well to ensure the continuation of the peace treaty is dumb. Why would one country give another country a slave only to expect them not to be treated like property?

I got sick of Damen because he acted really stupid. Did he do any schooling or foreign training as the future King? He's acting like he knows nothing about politics, foreign policy, or common sense throughout the book. I also didn't get a good sense of his personality aside from “violent”. I guess that's to be expected at a certain point when you're in his situation, but it came across as bad writing rather than intentional.

I did think some of the sex scenes were hot. The non-con BJ scene was pretty good. A lot of it was there for shock value, and I really don't get why the choice was made for Nicaise to be so young. This didn't really do it for me as a romance though. It's pretty explicitly not romantic. There's some sexual chemistry there between Laurent and Damen I guess but not enough to make up for the stuff I didn't like.

I'm definitely going to pass on continuing. These hyper-sexual books don't really do it for me, and this one doesn't have enough plot, theming, or technical writing skill to get me to keep going. I know that these books started as a webseries, and that at the time it was written it was different and groundbreaking. I have respect for CS Pascat and what they've made, I just don't think the story suits me, personally.

I thought this was a really fun story.

I'm not someone who generally reads contemporary romance, so I was kind of surprised how Goldbeck made me feel entertained and just invested enough to really enjoy myself.

I am not from New York, but I am from New Jersey pretty close to New York. I think this made it fun enough for all the references to the very New York places and mannerisms without picking them apart too closely, kind of like Manhattan is my weird cousin I only talk to on birthdays and holidays. This made it very fun for me, I love sort of knowing the in-jokes and I never get that when a story is set in LA.

I think Ari and Josh were great main characters for this type of story. They're both messy and very imperfect, but I think extremely well-adjusted people don't end up in a friend with benefits type situation.

Sometimes I find that too much texting feels choppy and breaks up the pacing of the book, but I liked that Goldbeck also included group texts. There was a scene where Josh was texting Ari while they were in the same subway car and I thought that was pretty well done.

I think, while I didn't like any of the characters, they all existed in the world believably and I was satisfied with their journeys. I think Josh and Ari confronted most of their hangups by the end and grew without completely giving up their identities as characters. The romance between Ari and Josh was mostly just okay, but I did like their banter. Goldberg was really good at putting them in funny or awkward situations that made me root for them to get out on the other side of it together.

The one thing I really disliked as it went on was Ari's fear of committing to Josh because she worried it would ruin their friendship. Their friendship was already irreversible damaged by their mutual crush before they even slept together, and I would've preferred for Ari to handle that a little more before actually doing it with him. Also, it felt to me like Josh kind of pestered her into sleeping with him. It seemed like she felt very pressured, both the first time and the morning after, into having sex with him. I didn't love that. The narration and the characters’ dialogue and thoughts made this better, but it still wasn't great.

Also, Goldbeck did this weird thing where she kept switching POVs without making it clear. One second we're seeing Ari’s thoughts, then we're getting a lot of information about why Josh did something, now we're back with Ari. This didn't annoy me as much as it has in the past with other books, but it still wasn't great writing.

Overall I liked this, I don't think it was anything astounding but I had fun reading it. It felt somehow comforting and familiar and it was a nice, easy, and silly read that didn't veer into too silly territory. The fact that this is Goldberg's debut book is impressive.

I started out really liking this. In a post-covid world, I think it's really interesting to re-examine something like this. Then once it stopped being the logistics of how people would initially respond to an epidemic and started being a survival story, it went very sharply downhill.

Let's address some things: I think this is pretty mired in ableism. Would society collapse if everyone went blind? Probably a bit. But blind people have been around for a very long time, and I'm really wondering if Jose Saramago did research with blind people advising him. He even states at one point, “Blindness is also this: to live in a world where all hope is gone.” I think there is a way to write about the pain and struggle of losing one of the senses without being so damn bleak and nihilistic.

There is also a lot of misogyny. The book was permeated with direct or indirect ways women were used or mistreated. Women are exclusively portrayed as wives, caretakers, or whores, sometimes in combination with each other. I almost had to stop reading during this plot where the women were taken for sex. Jose Saramago wrote this in a lot of detail and I really wanted to stop reading at this point. I really got annoyed when Saramago narratively pat himself on the back for making the glasses-wearing woman character, who he continually refers to as the GIRL in dark glasses so I thought she was a minor at first, concerned about her parents. Yes! Women can enjoy noncommittal sex and love their parents. Groundbreaking.

There were some silly things, like a guy dying of a leg infection in like two days. It would take way longer than that. I also think that leaving people in an asylum with no well person to run it is a bit crazy, too. Some people want power more than they are afraid of illness, and a military leader would've fit in here. I didn't see much talk about how the blindness spread, either, or any PPE which certainly existed at the time. Kind of crazy to have your main character be a doctor and write the least medically inquisitive ever.

I'm not sure why Saramago was so fixated on cleanliness and excrement. There are places all over the world where people don't have running water or much and they are able to keep clean. Saramago spent a lot of narrative work destroying individuality and community, which I guess would lead to these problems but I don't think it had to be like this.

He was also fixated on identity, which I know is some socialist thinking that he applied to this society, but it came off ableist as fuck. Does Saramago think blind people don't have a sense of identity? I kind of understood what he was doing with this, but I don't think it worked in this setting. This is a more ungenerous take for me, but I didn't think it fit in with the story.

I don't know if I have different opinions about society than Jose Saramago or what, but I found a lot of the Marxism over the top and unrealistic. This is supposed to be a study of societal breakdown, but somehow, even though there are only three women and basically everyone else on page is male, this book feels more like a study of women, by someone who has never spoken to a woman. Even the woman who has been surviving on her own is a “witch”. Every woman is immediately generalized by the narrative. The scene toward the end where all the ladies are sitting around talking about whether or not they're beautiful was like… so vapid and dumb.

I thought the scene where the wife finds all the creepy shit in the church was pretty cool, it was annoying that we had to hear the thoughts of some kind of writer character instead of exploring that.

Overall I see the exploration of the degradation of society, but this story was so damn patriarchal and misogynist that I couldn’t overlook it to see the bigger commentary on society as a whole. There’s a sequel that, during the first half of the book, I thought I’d want to check out to see the aftermath, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to read Jose Saramago’s thoughts on anything else. 2.5 stars, because I thought the first half was really interesting and I really, really hated almost all of everything past the 55% mark or so.

I may have gone into this with too-high expectations, because everything I’ve heard about this book has been people raving about how great it is, but I thought this was just okay.

The magic system is certainly unique, but the fact that we’re told that infected are all killed and there’s none around, and we meet three of them in this book before it’s halfway over makes it seem a little dramatic. I wish we got more information. Where are these cards from? Why are they scattered around? Degeneration also seemed pretty inconsistent. Why isn’t Ravyn degenerating so much? He says he can’t use the cards, but that doesn’t seem equivalent to what Elspeth or Emery went through.

I find that the biggest flaw with this book is that it’s underdeveloped. The world seems thought-through, developed, and intricate, but actually all that we know is that there’s a wood and mist, which is readily available information in the summary. How big is the wood? What’s in it besides the mist? Getting away from the wood, what does the town look like? I didn’t really have a picture, except maybe a vague British medieval town, but the name “Ravyn” kind of ruins that idea. Also, how big is this place? It seems like the only place around, but it can’t be. There are so many families there have to be other villages nearby. The book is fine as it is, if a little empty-feeling, but it could’ve been really immersive and interesting if a little more effort was put in. Also, for a world that has an illness that apparently grants people magical power and probably leads to them getting killed, why is there no name for this besides "the infection"? This started to feel silly the longer it went on. Gillig really should've slapped some kind of name onto this.

I didn’t really like Ravyn. I thought I would, at first, because he had an outside motivation–saving his brother–and was being tricky and manipulative. I didn’t think his magic ability made a lot of sense. He had a line that was like “don’t trust me, I’m dangerous” and I found it to be really cringey. Characters should never say this unless they’re going through some kind of manic episode or trying to scare someone else. Played straight this is a weird thing to say for almost any reason. I wanted to see more of him being a brother and a leader on page, as a love interest I really wasn’t that interested in him.

Elspeth was okay as a protagonist. She wasn’t useless or stupid, but I did feel that she didn’t do much to propel the plot. I think Gillig tends to write more plot-centered stories than character-focused ones, but she’s deceptive about it because her characters deliberate and plot and talk so much that it seems character focused.

There were a lot of characters there in the background, and honestly now that I've finished the book I'd be hard-pressed to tell you much about almost any of them. They were there to either help a little or be antagonistic. I didn't really feel like I got to know anything about them. I don't even think Ravyn or Elspeth really evolved as people during the story at all. They started out with certain goals and needs and at the end of the book they have really the same goals and needs, just more intensely. (I guess Elspeth did evolve as a person but in a way more literal sense than I would've hoped for.)

There was kind of a lot going on in this book. I thought at first that this was going to be a court intrigue/heist plot, but that only lasted for a short while and then it became about Elspeth continually getting herself out of trouble with the monster. This did make the whole theft plot feel a little unsatisfying and rushed. All this stuff together left me feeling like nothing really got its due payoff, we just closed one little plot loop and moved right o to the next thing.

I do think Gillig did a good job building tension. The scene where Elspeth was in the woods hiding, holding a hand over her mouth to keep quiet was really interesting. I actually really liked that whole sequence, with Jespyr in danger and the monster taking over. I did think that the subsequent scenes where she asks the monster for help felt kind of repetitive. I was really kind of let down that the monster Elspeth had been talking to was the Shepherd King. I thought maybe it would be a person who was forced to go into the mist. I also feel like I don’t really understand the consequences of this. I guess he’ll come back, but there has been a bunch of spooky shit happening already so what is his return really going to predicate? (Other than Elspeth getting body snatched or whatever, but I mean what does it mean for the universe.)

I think the end dragged a bit. I didn’t feel any tension at the end because I think once we got to the point that Elspeth’s body was being taken over, it was pretty apparent what was going to happen. I don't even find myself that invested in the solution to all these problems, because I'm sure they'll figure it out.

Overall I wasn’t that impressed with the book, but I will continue. I put the next book on hold on libby and it’s a super long wait so I’ll read it at some point. I’m fine with a wait, I’m not really chomping at the bit to get to the next one. I am a little perplexed about what everyone else really loved about this book, because it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever read but I think it was run-of-the-mill quality, with a unique magic-system and world that I don’t find myself appreciating much because it’s not done with enough care, and with below average attention to theming. As a debut book, this is pretty good, and I already see evidence with The Knight and the Moth that Gillig has improved her skills. 3 stars, and I feel like I’m rounding up a little bit.

I really loved Amy Harmon's The Bird and the Sword, and I'm so glad that I picked this book up based on how much I liked that one.

This book is so gritty and atmospheric I couldn't put this down after starting it. Getting swept up in this world was so fun, and Harmon does such a good job of sucking you in and making the world feel so real and everyone's problems feel so important that I had to force myself to stop about halfway through.

The pace of this book is quite slow. There isn't a ton of action, and the actual fighting and magic is mostly glossed over. Magic is pretty mysterious and is used only when necessary, so I didn't mind this. This story is about people and the things that happen to them, and a story like that needs to be experienced slowly.

I could never anticipate what was going to happen with this story. It wasn't so much that the story was full of plot twists, more like Amy Harmon took such a different approach to themes like family, feminism, and identity that I ended up surprised by the characters and their choices.

This book told a really bleak story about women, specifically. The characters themselves even remark on this, and this world is tough on everyone but man is it hard to be a woman in Saylok. Desdemona found the men so egregious that she took women away from them completely, but is it fair to deny girl children life because their life will be hard? I don't know, I feel like she made it much harder for all the women after her. 

Bayr and Dagmar are so good, it's almost ridiculous. Poor Bayr had to go through so much, and Dagmar had so many worries. Dagmar dying at the end truly broke my heart, there's another book after this one but I need to take some space because I'm so sad over this. 

I did find the middle to end bits to sort of drag, and I think the sudden skip in time had a lot to do with it. Harmon wasn't wrong for this because of course you can't go into every miniscule detail of a character's life, but it felt like it took me out of the story and then put me back in with different issues to face and I didn't love this. A simple Part 1 and Part 2 would have fixed this. I also would've enjoyed more focus on Ghost and Alba on their own, without Dagmar or Bayr there to influence them.

This book was a beautiful and at times very sad story. I love Amy Harmon and the way she crafts her fantasy worlds and breathes so much life into her characters. Magic is a scary and serious thing in her hands and I love being on her journeys.

I really liked this one, which I think is fitting because I haven't loved the last several Sandos that I've read.

I hope I can get to the point as an author where I have my main project and then a bunch of fanfic-like stories I can set in that universe just to have fun.

This is a YA story, and it's fun while also being very poignant. The themes about identity, individuality, service and even simple ideas like not compulsively stretching the truth were handled very well. The story was lighthearted without feeling overly silly or jokey, and actually the end almost made me tear up in one or two spots.

I do wish Sanderson would practice writing a female character who is not snappish and commanding and also stuck in a service role. I really liked Yumi and I think everything came full circle, but it does get a little old. I think Sanderson did a great job balancing Yumi and Nikaro, and the needs of the story and Nikaro's character development made her overbearing personality feel more well-rounded, but I would like to see some variety.

I really liked the cast of Nikaro's friends. I think having us come into the picture directly after a fallout is a very engaging idea, because sometimes we just have to deal with so many characters being introduced at once and this slight mystery made me want to piece together the group a little more. Akane was great, and I really loved how she instantly become friends with Yumi. The whole group was adorably protective of her and I really loved it.

The worldbuilding was really good, I didn't have the art but I still had such a vivid picture of the pools and the void and even Nikaro's apartment.

The whole concept of a sort of body-swapping isekai can be really cheesy, but the tone was perfect, to the point that we took it all seriously but it was still lighthearted and not too serious to the point that there was a tonal mismatch to the plot. I think not having them actually share a body was really smart. The whole thing had the potential to be awkward, but it wasn't and I'm glad because a romantasy writer doing this would have been unbearable. 

I do think that having Hoid's voice come in super strongly at some of the points was a bit annoying. I think it's funny and everything that he was a coat rack or whatever, but aside from leaning into that narrative voice, I hate all the explaining at the end that had to be done, and instead of just trying to write better so some of the twists were more apparent to the reader, it's funny because Hoid is the one explaining it. That really ruined a lot of the end of the story for me. Some of it was set up, but Sanderson either needed to do a better job with setup or have more faith in his audience.

This was really good, I don't think Sando needs more money but I do want a copy of the hardcover version with the art, because I listened to the audiobook and I do feel like I missed some of the experience. I'll be looking for a copy secondhand!

There's YA that is written as YA and is targeted with teens in mind, and there's YA that is a story that happens to be about themes and story beats that teens find relatable. I usually don't like books that fall I to the first category, and this one definitely does.

Actually, for the emphasis put on Six Of Crows for a story that is mostly nothing like Six of Crows, I think j the authors were trying to just make a more YA version of that. This is nothing like Six of Crows except that there's a ton of characters. 

I didn't really like this book. The concept was very fairy-tale-esque, which made me hopeful about how the Fae would be represented, but I think as a concept they were pretty underdeveloped, except just to be really magical.

The tone and inner voice of all the characters was very immature. Especially Rags. I really got tired of his POV, but I also didn't get a chance to know any of the other characters enough to understand their POV well.

The writing feels jarring at times, I am wondering if one author wrote all of Rags's parts and the other did everything else.

The romance seemed very tacked on after the fact. I felt some chemistry between the Fae and Rags but I got nothing from Rags. His comment at the end about their power dynamic pushed it from undeveloped to almost icky. It would've been nice to see this handled in the narrative rather than just being lampshaded in direct dialogue.

Overall I think this book was too ambitious and not organized well enough for all the POVs. I didn't find any of the characters to be bad, but none of them had much substance outside of quirks and one-liners. Silly jokes were prioritized over plot and character development. I don't think the magic system was done well. This seems like it was made to cash in on the hype of Six of Crows and books about Fae. Maybe it's not a cash grab and it was just two friends writing a silly story together, in which case the book just isn't for me.

Also the word “Queensguard” was said so much I never want to see it again.

I like the concept of this story, and the different classes of witches is a fun take that I feel is common in games and high fantasy but not so much in romantasy. I don't really understand why the red witches specifically were genocided or why the Fae need them, but it's a good enough concept for a story.

I wanted to really like this book, but sometimes the writing would really veer into immature YA territory. For example, this scene where Remy wants to see the moon over the ocean and Hale for some reason doesn't want to let her go was just annoying. Why are you squabbling like third graders? Just walk her to the damn beach, Hale. That could've been a nice moment between them, but it was just annoying.

I really hate when im reading romantasy and the “you're mine” concept of love comes up and is played completely straight. We all know that this is unhealthy, right? The context in which Hale says it to Remy is understandable, because she'd been attacked by witch hunters. But she does it back to him and it's just accepted by the narrative.

I didn't like the scene where Remy bullies the random background characters who call Hale a bastard until they pee themselves and cry. It felt very over the top and dramatic. This is also not how a monarch should handle name-calling, obviously. What if that was the reaction to her calling him a bastard at the beginning of the book?

This reveal that she's actually fae was pretty annoying to me. I'm sick of romantasy stories with fae making all the characters into faeries... it's weird, I want more diverse stories not less. I also think it's cringey to make Hale able to smell Remy's vagina from far away and to constantly comment on it.

This universe being rounded out with the fated mates trope is enough to prevent me from reading further. The only time fated mates is interesting to me is when it's subverted. I didn't really feel like the romance and bonding between Remy and Hale was done well, and the fated mates trope makes it seem like the author can't be bothered to put in the work to make the relationship cohesive and compelling.

I think this universe has a lot of potential, and it's interesting that the author has decided to make the sequels about different pairs of characters. I do wish the world was set up a little better for this. I feel like the witches are underdeveloped now the Remy is also fae, and we didn't learn much about the other courts. Usually for a story to take place in the same universe as its predecessor but follow different characters, the world is interesting enough to stand on its own. I don't think this series is terrible but there isn't anything new or exciting enough to keep me hooked. I feel like the author had good ideas but shied away from them to manufacture more of the tropes that romantasy is already inundated with. 3 stars for potential, if the rest of the books are ever on libby maybe I'd check them out too.

I really liked the audiobook. I don't think I've read a book narrated by Raquel Beattie but she did a great job. Sometimes too much whispering really bothers me but she did it well. 

This appears to be Deva Fagan's debut adult work. She has experience with middle grade work but no other adult titles under her belt. But wow! I really enjoyed this!

The world felt so well-crafted, Fagan did a great job introducing new concepts to us without over-explaining but also without being confusing. 

The writing was engaging and action-focused while also taking time to really get into these characters' emotions. I loved the purification fire power and the lore of reincarnation. 

I really don't have anything bad to say. Nilos and Sinoe were great love interests, who challenge our main characters to grow and test their beliefs. These characters are secure in their own identity and make quick, confident decisions that contribute to the plot moving along in a way that feels fast even when the story takes its time to explore the thoughts of everyone on page.

I am generally very sparing with 5 star reviews but Fagan earned this because this is an astonishingly good adult debut and I really want more adult fantasy books from her. This review is a bit short because I was too busy enjoying the story to take notes but I have already started recommending this book to my friends.

I really didn't enjoy this book as much as a lot of other people who reviewed it did.

The world is really conceptually interesting, and the gods having complete, direct control of their subjects also has the potential to be interesting. I do think that Skies jumped into the thick of this, putting us in the middle of the action without doing much explaining. Often characters are described as “the Vesper, the Glimmer” etc, so I guess all of the races look the same. Not my favorite way to do worldbuilding or character introductions. Twelve is a huge number to introduce in your first book. I understand that there's a bunch of clock imagery, but Skies could've done 6 races represented twice or something. I wasn't satisfied with descriptions of these races or their habits and this made it difficult for me to feel invested in the world. 

The steampunk/gaslamp vibe was fun, but I didn't feel that it was very represented in the world. The city of chime is interesting with its layers, but I don't really understand why the gods are cool with this place existing. I guess the wardens are there to combat that, but they haven't done a great job of this from what we see on page. 

I didn't really find myself liking the focal characters in general. Kayl was impulsive, rude, and got most of her thoughts across to the reader by swearing. I also didn't think a lot of her decisions made great sense, and the plot element where another character had access to her thoughts and she got access to theirs, only she doesn't realize this and thinks their thoughts are her thoughts got old very quickly. 

Quen also wasn't super likeable to me, and not much narrative time is spent on this massacre that he apparently helped cause. He's trying, I guess, wiping his own memories to keep the Godless safe. I'm not super clear about why he does this. Why now? I also didn't buy any chemistry between him and Kayl.

Malk is possibly the worst character, he has a longer name but he kept reminding of “Milk”. He and Kayl start out in an established relationship, which is underdeveloped but we get a lot of information about the copious amounts of sex that they have. This culminates in a scene where he accidentally hurts Kayl during sex after he goes through somehow of his own trauma, and I'm sorry but there was no getting me to like him after this.

The plot itself was very winding, with a lot of words to explain what was happening, and often repetitive dialogue that explained the same thing. This made me really not want to keep going back to the story,

I didn't love the audiobook. Especially toward the end, there was a lot of just screaming which grew irritating. The narrator was okay with accents, but when this wasn't present there wasn't a ton to differentiate one character's voice from another's.

Overall I think this book was very ambitious and I'm not sure that it was pulled off effectively. The scope was a little too big right off the bat for me to feel invested in the characters or world. I think this is a fun book, I just don't think it's right for me.

 This is my first Nghi Vo and I really enjoyed myself!
In-Yo is such a fascinating character, sympathetic and strong and cold hearted and empathetic. What a woman. I almost wish we could have gotten her story told from her own perspective or from Rabbit's perspective as it was happening, but I adored the impact of these things at the end when Chih bows to Rabbit and that moment has been living rent free in my mind since I read it.
We also get so much of Rabbit's unsaid feelings experiencing it this way, which really elevated the story and made it special. 
The dreamlike tone of the writing took some getting used to, and for the first 25% or so I was not really enjoying it. Rabbit kept saying lines that were basically “I'm not going to tell you what this means because you know already.” And sometimes I didn't know what she meant by that, but I found that as I continued I was able to catch on more and more. I think this was me struggling with the tone initially and needing to settle into the worldbuilding to get inside these characters' minds. 
Speaking of worldbuilding, I think it was pretty good. It took me a while to settle into this universe but by halfway through I was in a good flow. I am going to be honest, I don't really feel captured enough to keep going with the series (right now). I'd rather read some of her other works and come back to this series. Honestly, if these are ever collected I would get that and make my way through all of them, but buying each novella is going to get pricey. Works in this series are still being released, so maybe at some point they will get collected. I'm going to keep an eye out for sales in the meantime. 
This book handled some themes that I love; friendship, love, different types of loves, identity, politics, motherhood, and even the idea of recording information and what that does to the story and the people. This book has queer characters, from Chih who is nonbinary to Rabbit who is implied to be in love with In-Yo and Sukai. It did all this in about 100 pages and I didn't feel that anything was glossed over or handled carelessly. Yes I would've liked some more information about details of characters' lives, or a better overview of the world, but I think for a novella this is interesting, fresh, tonally intriguing, and well done. 

This book had a lot going on. For a retelling of the story of the Trojan War, I think there was so much originality which really blew me away. 
The focus on the horses for battle and gladiators was really interesting and I don't think I've ever read a story focused on something like this. Rhea was also a great focal OC, who didn't usurp the established characters of the mythos but added to the story in a really interesting way. I didn't care a ton about her blossoming love with Ajax. I actually really liked his little crush on her, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense for her to reciprocate. I will still allow it because it's a very fun idea. It's also hard for me to feel invested in these characters when I know that almost all of them die, but I wonder if Rhine will take any liberties with canon deaths.  
I was a bit surprised about the characterization of Paris. He's sometimes depicted as a villain but never to this degree. There is a precedent for him being cowardly and not much of a warrior (subjectively; he is usually depicted with a bow and arrow to avoid the front lines, but this book took the idea further than that), but making him outright abusive and in a loveless marriage with Helen is pretty different than most depictions.
I really liked the characterization of Hector also, he seems like a great guy. It really makes me wonder how Rhine will handle his death in the next book. There are so many stories about Achilles, it was kind of nice to focus on Hector for a change. I think Rhine did a good job of exploring his character and his action without taking the narrative power away from the women in the story, which is something I think Madeline Miller struggled with in Circe. 
Andromache was a great central character, and Rhine did a great job at portraying a (mostly) functional and romantic marriage to Hector without reducing her to the role of his wife, which the myths specifically try to do. Rhine took some liberties with her backstory–there is an Amazon warrior named Andromache, but this is Andromache of Scythia. I'm not going to pretend to know everything about Greek mythology, but I don't believe this is meant to be the same character. Anyway I don't mind this, I think it's fun and it falls into the character of well, no one said she didn't do this in any of the myths.
Helen's parts were interesting, again this was a new take on her story because of the nature of her relationship with Paris and even Hermione. Helen actively helping the people Troy is heartwarming and it's exactly what I would want for a character in her situation to want. I did like that she and Andromache bond throughout the story.
I didn't love Cassandra's parts. I found the writing to be too blustery and far-reaching and I don't think Rhine pulled it off well. I found it odd that she seemed to give her a personality disorder or something, and I don't think this added anything to the story or to her characterization. I also feel so annoyed when characters in a story believe Cassandra's prophecies–she was literally cursed not to be believed. How are they breaking the curse! This is kind of in love with Helen and Paris not having a happy marriage, because I guess Aphrodite's gift didn't work if that was supposed to be the case.
Overall I really liked this, it did fall short of 4 stars for me just because I wanted a little bit more from all of the perspectives, and the plot got a bit muddled and loose toward the end. Rhine pulled off the split perspectives very well overall, the only time I really minded it was when the perspective switched to Cassandra. I felt that Andromache playing an advisory role in the war at the end stages of her pregnancy was a little shark-jumpy, but it was fun to read. I'm a little worried that the next book won't be as good simply because it won't stand up to the established mythos–Rhine ended this book on a more hopeful note and we already know how the Trojan War ends. I want to see how this is handled, so if this book goes on sale on any of the apps that I use I will purchase and read! 

I have heard so much hype about this book, and I was really locked in for the first 50 or so percent, but I don't think Simmons could successfully convey all his ideas here. A lot of the pilgrims' storylines have unsatisfying ends that don't follow through successfully, and his storytelling style becomes more summative and told through characters' dreams or vision than directly from the characters' points of view, which becomes disjointed and makes the reader feel less connected 

>I liked Gladstone, but all the attention on Severn and Simmons's obsession with John Keats really got old. We get a lot of Gladstone's thoughts about this intergalactic war, and lot of facts, like the number of people on the planets in the Web who had to flee, but we didn't get much literary depth about the Ousters and the Hegemony. There are still two books left, so maybe this is more if a thing in those, but the whole time Severn was dying of tuberculosis, I wished that we were experiencing more of this war instead. I thought Kassad's POV would go into this more, being that he is from the Hegemony's army, but his parts were just about how he's an action hero.Severn also drove me a bit crazy, because he seemed to be there to summarize everything we just read. I didn't really understand this. I thought he and Lamia would pick up Johnny's mission, but instead Johnny came back to do it himself. Severn did not add much to the story in my opinion, which was annoying because we spent a lot of page time with him. I didn't find that Simmons did a great job conveying the datasphere to us, and his concept of AIs as this terrible thing was constantly mentioned but we don't actually see it. I thought Severn would give us more insight into the AIs and how they operate and control things, but he really didn't. He is just told by Ummon that actually there's a whole bunch of stuff going on that we don't get to see. I thought it was already revealed that Earth was destroyed by the AIs but this part acted like it was a big reveal. I don't know, Simmons really did a lot of telling and not showing with some of his farther-reaching ideas, and the AI stuff and really most of the war falls into this category.  Also, the part of the book where Severn was mistaken for some famous Keats student made me laugh. Why is everyone in this damn universe obsessed with Keats? Simmons really took his special interest and made it normal and popular in his fictional universe.This story did not feature the Shrike as much as I thought it would. When it was there, a lot of on-page time was spent doing decidedly un-scary things. It attends a funeral, which actually made me laugh and kind of ruined its image forever in my head. It carries a baby in its arms. It does surgery on Dure? I'm still not really sure why it hooked Lamia up to the Datasphere instead of just putting her in the tree with Silenus. Even the fight scenes with Kassad felt more gimmicky than scary, with the hundreds of Shrikes appearing or whatever. It struck me as more silly and less scary. And Kassad didn't do much outsmarting. Even though I think the action scenes were well-choreographed, I found it hard to get invested with a regular guy's fight with a being that can make hundreds of copies of itself.I thought that what Simmons did with Rachel was interesting (mostly), but Sol really got shafted. In Hyperion, we talk about his life's work being The Abraham Problem, and while he talks about it again here, there isn't much critical introspection. He comes to the realization that obeying God isn't about obedience, it's actually about faith in the divine, which... it took him his whole life to figure that out?! Pretty sure the Bible tells you this. I thought he'd come to a more conclusion about this, but this was such a non-deliverer. The whole scene of him just handing his infant to the Shrike was kind of a letdown after all that buildup. Simmons really got me with a whole countdown to the end of Rachel's life and then he just... hands her off. I was most invested in Rachel's story and this was the first time I realized the book was not going to deliver on everything that was built up in Hyperion.Rachel/Moneta is interesting. A time traveling love interest always hits. I dislike that Moneta is the Shrike's consort and keeper. Because why would a woman exist and not be a consort. Simmons is probably the least sexy guy alive. His handling of rape is unacceptable, which is the classic way men perceive rape with the “rape him until he likes it” method. This is a disgusting way to handle sexual assault and Simmons sucks for it. He also completely brushed off the trauma that Kassad suffered from his experience in Hyperion. Literally nothing Simmons has written about sex or romance has been appealing, from a human being point of view, not even a literary one. Anyway I'm assuming Moneta exists in the next two books.Silenus was the character that handled the theme of art and creation, except Severn also handled this in his constant mentioning of Keats. Silenus is terrible and I hated reading about him. I wonder if his experience writing his work is similar to Simmons's experience writing this. There's something to be said about the way he handled muses, where a horrible thing causes so much inspiration. I did find that Silenus's experience of the Tree of Pain made it seem less scary. It was very predictable that he found Sad King Billy there.Duré's story was fine, like I said the surgery from the Shrike was weird. I guess it's a good conclusion to his story that he becomes the Pope, since he was literally crucified and Catholics love that, but he just came back from the dead and I don't really understand how that happened. Apparently there was a vote, but bro just came back from the dead days ago. Also, his story was full of farcaster portal jug and felt very disjointed. One minute he's at the time tombs, then he's on a spaceship, then he's in the Pope place. I started to really dislike when his parts came up because it didn't fit in well with the rest of what was happening in the story. His crime of falsifying documents to prove that God existed before humans isn't brought up much even though this based in reality. Now that he's back from the dead everyone forgets about it and he's the Pope now. Okay?I don't have much to say about the Consul's story except that I didn't like it. I thought more about the Ousters would be revealed but other than learning what they sort of look like, we didn't learn much. The Hawking Matt was such a dumb device to include. I don't think Simmons devoted enough page-time to him to be successful, and since we don't actually know much about the war or the Ousters I didn't feel very invested in his story.

Simmons included so many ideas and themes in this book; there's religion and divinity, faith, parenthood, art and its creation, war, revenge, sacrifice, love, pain, and I even think there's something in here about artificial intelligence. I don't think he handled many of these very well. His thoughts about religion became repetitive and were very surface-level, but he excludes non-Abrahamic religions and even then he has nothing to say about Islamic religion or culture. Even Andy Weir was able to put some thoughts about space Muslims in his book, and it was really disappointing to find nothing here. I think Simmons was most successful with his thoughts about parenthood, and I really did like Rachel and Sol's story for the most part.

I did really like the first half of the book, when there was so much potential. I think Simmon's ideas and attempts at literary writing got jumbled up until he tripped all over himself in the last half of this book. It's a shame that he didn't spend more time doing character work with his newer characters, because he did a great job with that in Hyperion and that probably would have elevated the story and driven some of these themes more successfully. Mechanically the story is interesting, and I see what Simmons was going for with switches from this person to first and playing with tenses. I don't think his descriptions and imagery were as meaningful or powerful as they were in the first book, and overall the writing slipped as I mentioned to more summative and fast-paced rather than in-depth and immersion as more events and action-based scenes unfolded. 

I think 3 stars is my final rating. I'm disappointed with how things panned out, but I did like the ride in the first half of the book. I would be a little more forgiving if there wasn't so much Keats.

This book does a great job of making you feel connected to the characters. Even the characters I wasn't a huge fan of, like Selenius, made me feel invested in their stories. I really liked this, and it's not typical of sci-fi from this time. 

The space odyssey stuff was not as interesting as sci-fi ideas such as forced habitation of a parasite and a reverse-aging disease, and an ill-fated love affair with a woman who ages exponentially faster than you. I am still really impressed that a story about killing a god-monster can have so much depth. 

There were definitely some things I disliked, for example I really disliked Merin and his perspective even though the concept of his story was really good. His part was filled with so misogyny and weird nymphette imagery that I almost quit the book. I know he's supposed to 19; I know the imagery of Siri's body is supposed to emphasize the passage of time; dehumanizing older women while glorifying underage bodies is a disgusting way to do this, and there's no narrative consequence for it. It doesn't sit great with me that Kassad is literally Palestinian and he's portrayed as this guy who is capable of being so ultraviolent. Silenus's POV was horrible for the duration of the stroke thing. When writers make characters who are writers, they're always the worst ones.

Lamia's story left me feeling very neutral, I was kind of picturing robocop for her whole part. I'm really not sure where the next book will take her and I hope she's not squandered as a character.

I wish Simmons tried a little harder to create specific cultures for his made-up planets. After reading The Winter Queen, the worldbuilding is just not as good. There was definitely exploration of religion, but I think some of these ideas are not fleshed out very well. The idea of new iterations of Catholicism and Judaism are mentioned and glossed over. The Shrike is treated as an agent of God in some respects, so to mention religion and not explore what the Abrahamic religions might look like in a future society except for what everyone would already know feels cheap. I get a sense of the feel of the entire universe, but there isn't much individuality in these characters' backstories.

I found a lot of Silenus's chapter to not only center around a terrible character, but it was also very up its own ass. Simmons is trying to be literary with his allusions and references, and his attempts are very transparent. What is with his obsession with Keats? It's also a pet peeve of mine when everyone in a far-future setting keeps referencing things from current-day or historical Earth people or events. In hundreds of thousands of years of history on many different planets, why would Victorian England be the main inspiration for our characters? Keats was also my least favorite Brit lit author. Give me Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley or Charlotte Brontë. I know the title is a reference to Keats's writing, but why not just reference the actual Roman gods that inspired Keats. It's one thing to draw a title and theming and another to make a Victorian author a central figure of your space opera. 

I did like this “good guys are bad, bad guys are good” plot with the Hegemony and the Ousters. It's a bit cliche, but I think because space is so vast and time is so weird, in a space setting this always hits. I also think that when there were action scenes, they were written well. Kassad killing people with surgery lasers was pretty fucking cool. Also all brushes with the Shrike are suitably scary, and the descriptions are very good. I think these moments are when Simmons does the best job of flexing his writing skills.

The ending was annoying and anticlimactic in my opinion, I thought they'd at least see the Shrike. I know why this happened and I'm aware of claims that the publisher mandated that one book be split into two. That doesn't make it less annoying.

This book is very interesting, and a lot of it is really good even though there are plenty of flaws. Im enjoying reading this not only as a fun story but as education about what was going on at the time in sci-fi. I can see how creative and important it is and reading it is interesting in that lens.

I'm a little worried that the next book won't hold up, because obviously it will be departing from the Canterbury Tales style storytelling that really got me hooked. I'm hoping that the attachment I've already formed to the characters will bring me through the next book.

This was a fun conclusion to the unique world that the first book set up.
I'm gonna start by saying that I did not know this was a duology! I guess that's my fault but I really assumed it would be a trilogy. 
I think this would've really worked as a trilogy, because I found the ending to be the weakest part. There are a few plot threads that didn't feel concluded to me. What about Ligea? What about Halla's future? What about the countries that have no rulers now?
Theo abandoning the crown for Imogen felt unsatisfying. He alluded to being kind of unhappy ruling a few times, but like the job is really stressful. He was so set on performing his duty and doing his best for his country. Seeing him abandon all that specifically for Imogen felt wrong for his character, and I'm pretty sure there were other ways to get them to work.
I was also pretty unsatisfied with Halla. Theo was cruel to her for a lot of their interactions, and Imogen went from nice to horrible very quickly. I hope that Cassidy wants to return to the world and explore Halla a bit more. I really just want good things for her.  
I liked most of the rest of the story. Agatha and Lachlan got their happy ending. All the bad guys are dead. I also really liked Imogen. She's very flawed, and I think it shows skill to write a character who is so compelling but also so imperfect. The writing, once again, was beautiful and haunting without being overly flowery. The description of Ligea in the pool with veins attached to her was so creepy, and many of the descriptions of Eusia were similar. I also really like Theo lol, he would've earned extra points if he was nicer to Halla but I enjoyed him as a love interest and as a character. He's less compelling by seemingly not having any of his own goals, but I love a man who throws away everything for his love.

The sexy scenes were really good, and very sexy. I definitely got to a point where I kind of wished they would stop, but it was all good fun and I thought it never made me feel like I was sacrificing plot.
I am still so interested in this world. I want to know more about the other countries, about the siren goddesses, about how things will resolve after the story and about how things came to be. I really hope this universe is expanded upon a bit more. I didn't like this book as much as the first, just because I think the first book had some really powerful scenes while this book was much more action-and plot-focused, but I really enjoyed both of them.
I will keep an eye on Kalie Cassidy and see what else she has up her sleeve!

I really liked this book! 

Cliopher is a really dynamic character and I liked getting to know him. Goddard did a great jon of weaving this different cultural narrative into his identity while also allowing us to get to learn about it. 

I did think that some of the story beats felt repetitive after a while. The very long monologue about how his family has no idea about his job felt like it was the third time I was reading Cliopher say all that. 

I found myself also wishing that I got to see Cliopher rising through the ranks of the government instead of just hearing about it. So nucu of this story was us being told a whole bunch of stuff that already happened when I'm pretty sure I would've liked just reading about that happening. I think Goddard chose to tell the stoey this way to keep the focus off the Empire and on the island, but all the direct exposition got to be a little much sometimes. 

I also started to feel like the scene sequences felt a little repeptitve after a while. Cliopher had all these mic drop moments where he totally owned his philosophical rival over and over again. This started to lose its charm and sense of awe the more it happened, and it felt so wish-fulfillment-y instead of like a developed moment in a greater story. 

The end ritual went on a little too long really. The ceremony was reptitive and a lot could have been cut. I also wish the themes of the ceremony were introduced to us more in the narrative, because it gelt like a lot of idea were introduced to us just then.

These things are my only real complaints, the whole story was written absolutely beautifully. I was so engaged the whole time even though not much was really happening. I'm also 100% on board the Emperor/Cliopher ship. 

The next book comes out on audiobook in July and I am pre-ordering it!

I'm not continuing with this series.
I know romantasy, at times, is just an excuse to read sex scenes. Some people are fine with that. I demand more from my books, especially when the structure of a decent plot is already there.
This whole “forbidden romance” element was annoying and not done well. With the end of the book in mind, this makes a little more sense. But watching Thea go crawling back to a guy who won't just be in a relationship with her got so repetitive and irritating. I get one time, but they had full sex (and then some) like four times. Stop it. Stop fucking this man. Thea is like your drunk friend at the club. Just sit down and eat a snack and you'll forget about him.
It was unsatisfying that Thea's solution to being mad at Wren was to just forgive her. I thought she'd have some epiphany or figure something out about her past, but no! She just decides to stop being mad. Okay lol. They also have the exact same argument they had in the previous book, which is that Thea is selfish and doesn't care about Wren's goals, which... she doesn't. 
Thea was pretty immature this whole book, and was kind of bratty to everyone except Wilder. I dislike her much more now than I did at the end of the second book.
There was one training scene in this book. The plot is that she is supposed to be doing warsword training. This was the most frustrating thing. We just completely didn't care about the plot.
I also feel like what little plot there was got kind of muddled. I don't know a lot about this story. What's the veil, exactly? How does magic work? What is the actual history of this country? I feel like I should know that since the story is military based. For all that the first book was about women being unable to use weapons, we have literally never talked about that ever again. Wtf, Thea? Don't you want other women to have the same opportunity that you did? Oh wait, you don't. Because you're as selfish as Wren says. 
I read The Curse of Broken Shadows recently, and while I didn't love it, it was definitely executed better than this book. It's a similar idea with monsters and a veil, but it's an urban fantasy instead. That book did a pretty decent job of explaining magic and worldbuilding. This book hasn't really explained anything about magic at all. Where does it come from? Who gets it? What can those with magic actually do? I don't believe that magic systems always have to be explained down to every detail, but I won't feel invested in the story if the magic doesn't have a definition.
I'm not motivated to continue. I kind of want to know what's going on with Wilder, but my Libby only had up to the second book, and my Hoopla just reduced from 5 books a month to 4 books a month and I don't want to use one of those spots for the next book. If my library ever gets it in Libby I guess I'd continue, but that's the only way I'd keep going. 

This book is pretty different from The Very Secret Society for Irregular Witches, but it's also kind of similar?I definitely found it less tropey.
I feel like the narrative voice is exactly the same. Sera is maybe less whimsical than Mika, but I think she had a better backstory. I really found the concept of the echo Seras to be really interesting, and I don't think Mandanna took this far enough.   I feel like we were told all this stuff about how Luke is “icy” and cold and whatnot but he didn't seem that way at all. He came across as a genuinely very nice guy who has a super healthy relationship with his little sister? When was he ever supposed to be icy. This contributes so much to the fanfic feel of the story, because it really seems like I'm supposed to know about his previous behavior and have a negative opinion about it, but everything we were actually shown about him was nice and well-balanced.
I said that Very Secret Society felt like fanfic, and this does too. I think what specifically makes this feel like fanfic is the obvious use of a MacGuffin in the “essence of sunlight”. The worldbuilding does not set this up as a super important thing, and it really doesn't talk much about magic at all, except for how Sera is upset by not having it. I didn't even feel upset when Albert broke it because I didn't understand why they can't just get more. The worldbuilding in this one felt very incomplete, too. Am I wrong or is this not listed as a sequel to Very Secret Society? It's definitely set in the same world, right? The Guild seemed to be so vague and unexplained, you'd definitely need more background to know what the hell is going on. Again, very fanfic-like.
Clemmie betraying Sera was super obvious, I don't understand how people didn't see this coming. As soon as Albert said he saw a fox “dashing away” I knew that would come back. It felt so unnatural in the moment.
The plot was pretty rambling, we had Clemmie's curse, Sera's magic, Posey, Matilda and Jasmine's love which honestly seemed to come out of nowhere. A lot of page time was spent on observations or small scenes that didn't amount to anything. I didn't think Posey's arc really had a satisfying conclusion, I thought she'd do more in the story. There were a lot of supporting characters also who really didn't get much page-time, which was kind of surprising for a magical inn. I thought we'd have a cast of kooky background characters, but we mostly avoided that. Nicholas was mostly random and weird. I thought they would like, go to the ren faire at some point or something, but he seemed to be there just to annoy Sera and for Mandanna to flex her cozy character creation skills or something.
I found some of the dialogue to be totally unrealistic. I get the point Sera was making with her whole “my magic is a galaxy and my wings are clipped” speech but god can you imagine saying something like that to anyone? I had to take a break here because I felt so uncomfortable. 
The end was weird, I know Mandanna was trying to make a thematic statement by keeping Sera without her magic, but I felt like we easily could've had it both ways. Clemmie becoming chancellor really annoyed me. We barely got any satisfying consequences for her betrayal of Sera, plus all the characters are constantly telling her she's out of date, and now she's in a position of power? This felt very Harry Potter where all the main characters marry their high school sweethearts and they get their dream jobs that they had since they were kids.
I didn't love this book, but I think I enjoyed reading it more than Very Secret Society. I think I'll give it the same score, because I think it's less organized. I preferred Jamie to Luke but I also preferred Sera to Mika. I felt like the conflict in this book was way more interesting, which was something that drove me nuts about Very Secret Society. I don't know, I kind of think Mandanna is just not the writer for me. I like other cozy stories so I know it's not the genre.

 It took me a while to feel really captured by this book, but when it did finally make that connection I was surprised how much emotion it squeezed out of me. 
The beginning of this book is a bit weirdly paced, tying together a kind of ambling pace that feels almost cozy and memoir-like, with the harsh reality of an unstable and dangerous political regime. I liked reading this and as someone who doesn't know much about this part of the world during this time period, I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I was getting annoyed with Ellie, who was only reacting to her upbringing and the way she knew to get by, but who was starting to annoy me with her self-righteousness and jealousy. When we finally started getting Homa's point of view, it was a relief and it put Ellie's perspective into an a more enjoyable lens.
I did feel like Homa could have taken a quick second to explain to Ellie why she didn't want to speak to her anymore, or gotten someone else to be a messenger for her or something. I was able to accept the state of their friendship after Homa's imprisonment but I was kind of annoyed about it.   
The writing was so detailed in some aspects, but Kamali really shied away from some of the darker things, for example her account of the attacks and how they affected Bahar and Homa felt very summative and glossed-over. Homa's time in prison was also really truncated. I think after reading The House of the Spirits, I expected a little more from this. I know why she didn't go into details about these things–she wanted the focus to be on the women and the things they were trying to fight–but I think this book could have gone a little deeper on some of the things that ultimately really affected the characters.  
The last 30% of this story was so emotional and heartfelt, I was wrecked by how beautiful Homa and Ellie's relationship was. Homa is such a force, Ellie was trying to live up to her, and she was carrying a lot of guilt, and by saving her daughter I do think Ellie redeemed herself. I was so worried Homa was going to die at the end of the book, luckily this did not happen but she was still lost to her family. I don't think Homa would have been happy staying in America, and the ending with Homa guiding the next generations of women and being a Lion Woman above all else even makes me cry as I'm writing my thoughts now.  
I don't have that unwavering love for my country and the people in it, and the pain that these girls carried with them and the good they are trying to do is so earnest it makes me ache. 
Overall I think this is a 4-star read, I wanted a little more from the book but the end was devastating scene after devastating scene and gave me everything I wanted from the earlier parts.

I liked this book, but man I was frustrated at Cora for 90% of it.

Hannah did a great job writing about toxic love. I know Cora was in a pretty bad situation, and while her attitude made me angry I really did connect with her as a woman who didn't know what to do with what she was given in life and tried to do the best for everyone she loved. 

As an oldest daughter who has had to shape her life around her family and, and as someone who had to do a lot of figuring life out for her mom, Leni's situation really got to me. Leni was strong and had her own values but she also did everything for her loved ones. She had so many obstacles in her way and she never gave up.

I found the two more action-based survival scenes to be so well written and consuming. The scene where Leni and Cora have crashed the car and Cora broke her arm was so cool. I also thought the scene where Matthew was trying to rescue Leni from the crevasse was really tense and well-done.  

was so angry when Ernt was at the house after Leni got out of the hospital because Cora hadn't pressed charges. Cora played a stupid game of “how little can I do to protect myself and my daughter” and ended up putting them in a horrible situation.I

The medical writing in this was a bit barbaric. I don't know why they acted like Matthew might die when they extubated him, they could just reintubate. Pressure Control was around at this time, and Alaska is remote but Anchorage is the capital of the state and there are naval bases all over so... this was super weird to me. I did appreciate how Hannah didn't shy away from Matthew's decompensation, a lot of authors won't go there in the way that Hannah did.

I found it weird that Leni taught MJ about Alaska as part of his “heritage”. They're not Alaskan natives so I don't know what the hell that was all about. Leni lived there for less than ten years.Cora and Leni both acted like they were Alaskan by birth or something, and even Ernt acted like they were different than everyone visiting or being new to move in.

Tom Walker coming in at the end, being so understanding without anger or judgment, made me so teary. This is the life Leni should've had. The one she deserved. This is why her father hated him so fiercely; he had the ability to give Leni so much.

I do think that this plot thread of Leni confessing and getting on trouble was resolved way too quickly. I get that Hannah included this as an end to Leni's guilt, but it felt kind of silly honestly. Of course Marge and Tom Walker stood up for her, but this sort of makes it feel stupid that they ran away. If it was that easy then they probably would've been fine if they stayed. I don't really know why Hannah made them stay in Seattle, I feel like it was all build-up for a very sad reunion with Matthew. I would've enjoyed reading about Leni supporting him as he rehabilitated more.

The eulogy for Cora was definitely sad and sweet and made me tear up.

I enjoyed reading this a lot more than I thought I would based on the summary, and there are some scenes and ideas that I think will stay in my mind for a while. That being said, the tension was pulled a little too tight throughout and as a reader there wasn't much chance to breathe. At a certain point this felt like a chore to get through, where I didn't want to put it down but only because something terrible was happening again, or was implied to be about to happen, and I wanted to get through that, but then something else terrible immediately happened. It seemed like Hannah wrote this way on purpose, but I wasn't a huge fan of being pulled through a story like this. I'm not sure who I'd recommend this too–it's not a thriller or straight-up survivalist, or romance or historical fiction. I guess I'd recommend it to people who like to be emotionally destroyed.

I am so invested in this story.

Hands down, Fonda Lee has done the best worldbuilding I've read so far this year. I felt like I was in Kekon. The grittiness of the setting brought me back to my middle school days of watching Batman Beyond on my box tv thinking it was the coolest thing ever. (I still kind of think that.)

I thought the beginning sequence was excellent indirect exposition to the world, teaching us about the violence of the environment and the way jade is revered and sought after. It also introduced us to some big name characters.

I think this would make a sick cartoon or comic book, with opportunities for stylizing that would be so cool and fitting.

 Lee did not pull any punches, I really thought Shae was going to end up with the neighbor who was spying on her, but no–he dies by the end. It's been a while since I read a book that build up characters and makes them into real people just to kill them off.  

Shae is my favorite character and she had some pretty good character development, followed by Wen and Anden. I don't think you're supposed to like Hilo that much but his redeeming quality is his love for Wen which made me able to stand by him. 

I actually suspected Lan would die, I was surprised when I was right. This book builds tension and doesn't pull its tension. I really thought Hilo would die at the end and I'm wondering where Lee is going with this in the next book.There is just so much potential I'm excited to continue the story. 

I'm hoping in the next book for the Shae and especially Wen to get more page-time where they are directly affecting events of the story.  I also am predicting that the next book will feature Anden exploring his identity and being forced to use jade at some point, and Hilo will mayhbe go crazy with power.  

Very fun read, I really can't think of much that I didn't like. 

I really liked the last 20 or 15 or so % of this book.

The setup was really compelling but I was a bit put off by the dual plotlines. This narrative style always either really contributes or really takes away from the rest of the book, and I didn't really like it here. The problem was I really liked the past storyline and I didn't love the current one until closer to the end. 

For a space opera, there was a lot of sitting around talking. Even at the end of the book when the reveals are happening there's so much dialogue. I actually looked up the definition of “space opera”, and I think because of Star Wars I made the assumption that space operas were driven by action and fantasy aspects.

This book has a lot to say, about identity, individuality, loss, grief, revenge, forgiveness, and yes, justice. I really liked the way the author established a gender-fluid society. 

I kind of wish there was a little more worldbuilding in the beginning, to give me a better foundation for all the dialogue and discussions that happen.

Overall this book has such a unique concept that is pulled off very eloquently. I did miss more action in this, but I was entertained by the significance of the theming the story handled. I am going to pause in reading the rest of the trilogy for now, because recently the first book and the third book have become available on my libby account, but the second one is not. Hopefully they'll add it soon!

I'm not going to go on an on about this, but I didn't like it much. 

I had the same problem I've had with other works by Ross, which is that I just don't feel connected to the characters. Her works feel more fairytale like rather than like reading a book. I don't find myself relating to characters or their decisions very much.

This work has a lot of praise for lyrical writing. I didn't like Wild Reverence at all, but I did agree that it was written lyrically. I didn't really feel this way reading that book. I just felt that there were a lot of words. 

The mystery was compelling enough to keep me from DNFing, but I was a bit annoyed because we didn't get any hints that Adaira was a child of the west. At least, nothing that would make any sense when experiencing the book for the first time. I also felt that it was obvious who was taking the girls, but I guess it wasn't supposed to be?

I think Rebecca Ross is just not for me, and I'll probably not try out any of her works again. 

I'm giving this a 2.5 because I didn't really think anything was wrong with it mechanically or thematically, and even the writing is just something I don't personally like. 

 This book has the bones of a good story, with a protagonist with a compelling motivation and problem. It suffers by not pushing hard enough to accomplish anything unique. 
This whole “Girls can't wield weapons” thing was only an issue for the first 15% of the book, and once Thea gets what she wants we don't have to address this ever again. This actually baffled me because it's in the summary and everything, and the only payoff we get is some conflict that is quickly resolved with finality that lasts for the rest of the book. I wish Audra was in more of the book, the fact that she shows up, sticks up for Thea, and then disappears is pretty disappointing.
Wilder is contentious toward her, but this felt like a weird narrative back and forth. He sticks up for Audra in the beginning of the book, so we know that he's less biased than the other antagonists in the story. But then he's a jerk toward her. But then he kind of likes her, but they can't act on it for some reason that I don't really understand. 
I really liked Wren, and I liked the argument she had with Thea. I could see where they're coming from, which takes skill to set up and pull off. Wren might be my favorite character, and I really liked all the scenes that she's in.
The rest of the characters in this book are boring, and that includes Thea. I can forgive a bland main character, because sometimes we need a simple vehicle through which we can absorb the story. But Thea was pretty boring, and Wilder was also really boring. I didn't like the buildup to their romance. I'm fine with instant attraction, but I didn't really understand why they had to be so immature about it. I didn't really feel the emotional progression of their relationship, they just kind of did stuff near each other and then they fucked against a tree . 
Cal and Kipp are boooooring. They don't have a personality to rub together between the two of them. Malek was used as a weird disabled sympathy character to establish that Thea is such a good person, and also to give her a deeper connection to Wilder. I didn't like this conceptually at all.
This setup for the next book where Wilder will have to teach her warrior things while they ‘llpretend they're not attracted to each other is also not very interesting. This flimsy forbidden love has been done so many times before, and I still don't really get why it's forbidden. They're not acting like adults, except for that time they fucked against a tree.

There's just nothing in this book to set it apart from other fantasy-focused romantasy novels. I do like the worldbuilding, but Scheurer doesn't explore her own world or lore enough. I like the idea of the characters, but none of them are strong enough in their conviction or face enough of a challenge to really become something unique. There's a mysterious woman that's been alluded to here but never fully explored, and I feel like we should have gotten more of that before the book ended. I wish this book had the nerve to be about something, but it really is just serving us romantasy and nothing else.
I'll read the next book, purely because it's free on Libby. Aside from being a little boring, there's nothing egregious about this book. I am hoping some of this might be Scheurer getting her footing in this new world with these characters. There is a lot of potential. The next book will ultimately decide whether or not I continue on with the series.

  Everybody seems to love this book and I really didn't. I wonder if it's because I didn't read Six Crimson Cranes. It's also becoming apparent that not liking Beauty and the Beast is a much bigger shortcoming than I thought and it's affecting more of my life than I think it should.
I liked the unique setting, I didn't realize that so much of this book would be underwater. 
Overall I found the tone to be very immature. I know that this book is YA but I don't think that justifies the childish behavior or reactions of the main character. I think this is related to the immaturity of the tone, but I didn't find the romance to be compelling at all. I thought the book was asking a lot of me in expecting me to get behind this romance. I found their first kiss to be ill-timed and honestly I'm scratching my head to understand what Tru liked about Elang. Yeah he bankrolled her family but this was very superficial.
I also felt that the pacing was odd, with Tru aimlessly finding stuff to do, >like rescue a turtle with her demon friend, and then all the reveals and most of the actual plot were packed into the last 30%. I didn't find Tru to be very likeable. She randomly did whatever it was that she wanted to do and then got angry at everyone. Her family were also all unlikeable in my opinion. I think Lim tried to breathe life into the mom character by making her difficult, but she was overbearing and offered no actual solutions to anything, and she was perfectly fine with letting her daughter marry a dragon instead of trying to do anything herself. The whole family pitched in at the end, but I felt like Tru made it extremely easy for them to do this.
The concept of Elang's pearl being hidden in Tru's heart is very interesting and really wasn't expanded upon enough. I also felt this way about Shani, where I really wanted to know her as a character and what place demons have in this world.
I don't know, maybe the problem is me, and maybe the immaturity is just a part of YA novels that I can't relate to anymore. I'm glad I read this book, and the end part with the flowers was a really nice moment, but I don't think this story was for me.