• A history-based time travel adventure/romance, taking place in Great Britain around the tur
Frankly, what the HELL just happened?
Things this book is:
• A history-based time travel adventure/romance, taking place in Great Britain around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Kind of slow. Much more heavy on the reflective, atmospheric and emotional side than the adventure one, though there is plenty of seafaring gore.
• Gay.
• Not super surprising. As soon as you get the first reluctant crumb of background about The Kingdom from Kite and the first flashback, you know the MC's previous identity and pretty much what's going on. Then it's just waiting half the book for him to catch up with everyone else.
• Leaving me WILDLY emotionally conflicted. Was the ending happy? Are we happy about this? Do we like both of the MCs? Like, I see it, but having some qualms about (view spoiler)[Kite's murdering a young boy just to protect the secret of his own love from Joe and the general faff about him murdering a decent amount of other people and not being fully stable seems justified if Joe is going to raise two toddlers with him. Also, Joe literally was married three different times and had two other sets of children, which is giving me pause. (hide spoiler)]
• And then there's every other relationship that happened in the book, most of which are at least mildly disturbing in some way. Is this okay? Are we all okay with this? I'm going to need a memo written to explain the emotions I should be having, because I'm pretty sure the confusion and discomfort I have going on are not what the author intended.
Okay, for the first entire half of this book I was pretty much just reading for obligation. Is the worldbuilding creative, detailed, and interesting? Okay, for the first entire half of this book I was pretty much just reading for obligation. Is the worldbuilding creative, detailed, and interesting? Yes. Are the characters well-drawn and interesting? Yes. Did I care? No.
I'm not sure if it's just because vaguely noir gangster settings are not my cup of tea, because they aren't. But I was just solidly hacking my way through a book that felt like it was going so slowly. It took me THREE DAYS to read this, and 2 of those days I didn't even reach the halfway point.
At the halfway point, something happened.
It was unexpected. I suddenly began to care. Now I'm in the uncomfortable position of not liking most of the characters, not being too invested in the world itself, but still wanting to know what happens next. I would give this 3.5 stars if I could. ...more
Well, we made it. The third book in this series is the best one.
It's amazing how much Tamora Pierce manages to leave out while writing extremely slow-Well, we made it. The third book in this series is the best one.
It's amazing how much Tamora Pierce manages to leave out while writing extremely slow-paced books. You'd think given how much time we spend with Daine just dwelling on details, we'd know about everything that's going on. Instead there's an apparently longstanding epic war happening, and we're fixated on the daily events of Daine and Numair's plodding road trip through the Divine Realms.
To be fair, that's still enjoyable. But in most ways this book is like its predecessors. Some fighting, lots of shape-changing, a decent amount of journeying and sitting around. I like the darkings, so they were an improvement over the usual pocket animal companions.
Also, can I just say that it's a bold move to have a just-turned-sixteen-year-old apprentice get with her thirty-year-old teacher? I like Numair and Daine but like, who signed off on that?...more
Me: Boy I sure do hate vampires and also the Napoleonic era
Also me: EXCEPT when they involve intricate, shady politics and also INTENSE, COMPLEX LOYAL
Me: Boy I sure do hate vampires and also the Napoleonic era
Also me: EXCEPT when they involve intricate, shady politics and also INTENSE, COMPLEX LOYALTY AND FRIENDSHIP DYNAMICS
Then, I apparently love those things. This is the slowest political and historical and emotional slow burn ever... the tension! The detail! I loved it.
Like I said about the previous installment in this series, if you are looking for a way to describe the exact opposite of this book, "rip-roaring" would be the adjective you want. It's not rip-roaring at all. Even its most rip-roaring moments mostly consist of people talking and thinking and feeling intensely.
I have to admit that the first half of this story did take me a little bit to get into. I didn't really like spending time with Napoleon. His arrogance is nice, but it was nothing compared to the powerfully compelling emotional trauma of spending time with Desmoulins and Robespierre in the first book. Wilberforce and Pitt were on the outs. The Haitian revolution was still doing its thing.
I enjoyed it, but I was waiting for things to really pop off. And boy, did they.
The best parts of this come after Fina joins forces with the rest of the secret anti-vampire task force. I loved Pitt and Wilberforce, as always. Their friendship is SO GOOD and their banter makes me smile every time. I loved how Pitt's decisions are complexly examined from all sides, and he isn't blatantly painted as correct about everything even though he's obviously one of the central good guys of the story.
The intensity just builds and builds in the last half, until I was fully on the edge of my seat. I loved the eventual resolution, how it was Fina who technically did it but really no one was actually able to do it alone. The bittersweet tone of the ending was just what I expected and hit exactly the right tone.
Overall, this duology is GREAT - such a unique story, and I'm so glad I got the chance to read it....more
Temeraire is just as excellent and endearing as ever, and his and Laurence's bond is still the best thing in the whole entire world. We The good news:
Temeraire is just as excellent and endearing as ever, and his and Laurence's bond is still the best thing in the whole entire world. We get to meet up with Riley again, and this book does address a lot of questions the first book raised regarding what exactly is up with the way dragons are treated.
The bad news:
This book is REAL slow. Not in the good way, but rather in the "we are sailing to China the whole time and there's almost nothing to see" way. It was more stressful, and the stress still isn't totally resolved. We were separated from all our friends in England the whole time, and I don't think we really made any new ones in exchange. It was still a deeply enjoyable experience, but I hope the series will return from whence it came for subsequent installments....more
It's the story of two college roommates who give themselves superpowers, and then everything goes wrong from therOkay, this is my favorite Schwab yet.
It's the story of two college roommates who give themselves superpowers, and then everything goes wrong from there. Both of them are either psychopaths or sociopaths, not sure. Both of them are fixated on each other, first in a way that was like an intense uncomfortable bromance and then later with an intense uncomfortable desire to murder each other.
Victor is cool, and evil. Aside from the superpowers, Eli is your average "has a traumatic relationship with religion, guilt and sin because of his abusive hypocritical dad" serial killer. With the addition of Sydney and her sister, everything becomes very interesting.
I have to praise this story's balance specifically. I doubted whether I would like it, because it was billed as a story with no good guys and I do need someone to root for. But Victor walks the line very well between actually evil and easily woobified, and Sydney is completely sympathetic. Also, the story was brought to a satisfying enough full circle, but there's also a lot left here that makes me want to read the next installment.
Overall, this book is compulsively readable, broken into easy chunks that practically fly by. I enjoyed it a lot, and it only took me so long to read because Return of the Thief came out this week and I have priorities. ...more
The entire thing is just romance. There's like a tablespoon of plot.
Isobel is a painter who lives in the weird in-between town oThis was pretty cute.
The entire thing is just romance. There's like a tablespoon of plot.
Isobel is a painter who lives in the weird in-between town of Whimsy, which seems like it exists in the Fae Realm but is populated by humans that form a sort of service economy for fae clients. She paints portraits for fae clients until one day she paints one for the Autumn Prince. And boom. That's it.
The story has a sort of fairy tale feel.
It's both slow (the plot) and fast (the feelings) at the same time. There's a lot of it that is just traveling back and forth under the trees of various fae realms. There's forbidden True Love. There's cutting your own finger off. There's a solution which seems kind of too easy, given the amounts of otherworldly power we're supposedly talking about. There's glamours and secret true names and clever bargaining, etc.
I liked it, honestly. I liked Rook and Isobel and honestly the whole "true form" thing never fails to get me. I liked that the life of the fae was portrayed as genuinely not at all desirable. I even liked the romance.
It wasn't deep at all, and there were a lot of things I'm still left wondering about (What was the source of the corruption? Was it just the Alder King's being asleep? What does Isobel's new rank mean? Is she still mortal? Was there some secret backstory behind Isobel's parents as implied, or not?) but I enjoyed it. It was cute....more
I... don't know how to rate this. I would give it 3.5 stars if I could.
The plot is interesting. Jude is a human girl who grew up (for a given value ofI... don't know how to rate this. I would give it 3.5 stars if I could.
The plot is interesting. Jude is a human girl who grew up (for a given value of 'grew up,' since she's still a teenager) in the Faerie Realm. I haven't read many fae books before, so I don't know if this is normal, but I was definitely taken by surprise at how genuinely horrible the Faerie Realm is. Almost no one in this book is a good person.
I'm genuinely trying to think if any of them are, other than Jude's baby brother. Possibly Vivi, Jude's older sister? For some reason I'm picturing her as a scene girl, and she was probably the most innocent in everything that went down. Possibly just because she was offscreen most of the time, but we take what we can get.
Jude and her sister are seemingly persecuted almost every day by their fae schoolmates with the kind of abuse and trauma that people spend lifetimes in therapy trying to fix. The whole society is amoral and thoughtlessly cruel. Existing there is a hardcore battle for survival. Jude ends up getting tangled up in political schemes that are way above her head, and is right at the center of things when the world comes crashing down.
Like I said, the plot is interesting. Jude comes out of it far better than anyone, including herself, could have reasonably expected, but is also still in a profound amount of danger. She's more of a bull in a china closet than any kind of spy, so I'm kind of terrified to find out what happens next.
What makes this odd is the fact that they could leave for the human world any time they want. I get the fear of the unknown, being alien in a place you should belong, not knowing how to survive there, etc etc etc. But it almost seems like both Jude and Taryn have some unhealthy amount of Stockholm Syndrome type relationship with the Fae Realm. Like they stay because they just desperately NEED to somehow prove they have value in the eyes of the fae, rather than because it's their home and they want to stay.
And then we have Cardan.
Honestly, liking anyone in this series is just a capricious flip of the coin. There's no one here that deserves to be liked. I like Jude well enough, and honestly I like Madoc a lot. Why? No clue. There's no good reason to. But even thinking about Taryn, Locke, and all the others -- they're just as bad as each other. Why would I hold a grudge against Taryn and Locke's stupid game-playing when I'm supposed to not hold a grudge against Cardan's abuse?
Cardan is... fine. I can see him developing from here into a character I could love, but I could also easily see the opposite happening as well.
Anyway, I think this is what they call "enemies to lovers," except it's not, because at it's actually "enemies to reluctant allies to enemies again." Sigh. And the dynamic promises to continue and even intensify in the next book. Am I the only one who just doesn't like this dynamic? If you love each other then ACT like it! "Ooo will they kiss or will they kill each other" is just not fun for me.
I kind of want to find out howmst the heck either of these incompetent teenagers will manage in the next book, but I'm also afraid. ...more
*INHALES DEEPLY* Okay, the first book in this series was good. It just seemed too fast and too surface-levelEveryone in this bar is a certified idiot.
*INHALES DEEPLY* Okay, the first book in this series was good. It just seemed too fast and too surface-level for me. I wanted more of the magic lore, more heart put into the relationships. I was excited to start this book and go a little deeper into the world of the four Londons.
Did we learn anything about Kell's mysterious backstory? No.
Did we learn anything about Lila's mysterious obvious powers and why she has them? Not really.
Did we advance Kell and Lila's relationship and really get any feeling that they, as the story so badly wants you to believe, actually like each other? No.
What we DID learn is that Rhy, Lila, and Kell are all irresponsible and shouldn't be trusted. The entire story is focused mostly on a magic olympics tournament, which ALL of them are involved in entering illegally. At great risk to themselves and the kingdom. For absolutely no good reason. Just to blow off some steam. The entire story, right up until the end when plot actually, suddenly, happens.
Kell and Rhy's situation makes sense, and their frustration and friction, while unpleasant to read, seems justified. I don't enjoy their fighting and self-destructiveness, but sure, given what happened in the last book, I will tolerate it.
Lila, on the other hand, reaches PEAK levels of annoying in this book. She was already annoying before, but she grew on me by the end of A Darker Shade of Magic because she seemed to be moving beyond her selfish, cocky, thoughtless thief persona. Nope. In this book, she absolutely regresses back to her usual self-destructiveness and selfishness. And what's worse, she has an empowering mantra she recites every time she does something stupid. If I never heard it again it will be too soon. Her dynamic with Alucard doesn't help at all.
I also am upset because REALLY? (view spoiler)[Holland was saved just to come back as the slave of YET ANOTHER EVIL ENTITY? If somebody doesn't rescue him before this series ends then SO HELP ME I will have my revenge. (hide spoiler)] I also can't believe his whole plan was to send a messenger saying "Kell pls come help us" because he KNEW Kell would just be like, "You know what? Absolutely." I would honestly love Kell so much if only there were room in between all my frustration.
I do want to read the last book because I am still invested in a few things. Namely, Kell's mysterious backstory, why Gray London seems to be growing magic again, and why Lila has the powers that she does. I also want to see Kell free of the horrible king and queen. I HOPE that the last book can deliver... some actual resolution... and just a crumb of resonance in any of the relationships....more
Yet another millenia-old immortal demigod: Ah, Tal'kamar, long have I waited for this day. At last I will avenge your betrayal and make you suffer as
Yet another millenia-old immortal demigod: Ah, Tal'kamar, long have I waited for this day. At last I will avenge your betrayal and make you suffer as I have suffered.
Caeden, sword out and brain empty: WHOMST
This book... was another highly enjoyable yet baffling ride through this impossibly dense world.
There are so many things I've failed to absorb. I think the name of the main country is Andarra? The name of the witch-hunting country starts with G? I do NOT remember any of the names of the Venerate besides Caeden, and nor do I remember the horrendous fantasy names of any of the places. The specific threads of plot after plot within plot and vision after prophetic vision are still escaping me, though I feel like I've got at least a little bit of a grasp, compared to last book where I was totally at sea.
You know what I do remember though? The CHARACTERS.
Wirr's journey in this book was rough, but I loved it. Him discovering the truth about his father was PEAK creepy even though I knew the whole time what had happened and also agreed with it. Can't wait to see if anybody gets it together politically in the next book.
Davian's journey was interesting as well, and Asha's. You-will-magically-believe-everything-I-say mind control will always be one of the creepiest powers hands down, and I was glad all the Augurs got to finally travel together and address the Boundary problem instead of just wading through more politics. And I was SO happy when Asha, Wirr and Davian all got to hang out together! Even if it lasted for approximately 0.4 seconds.
The plot is slowly and bewilderingly coming together. Now Caeden has regained a bunch of his memories, we can see that the real war is between the pro-God and anti-God factions. Is god God or is he the devil in disguise as god, seems to be the main dispute. I have no idea what the heck anyone is going to do about it, either way, but I'm intrigued to find out. Also I can't believe what Asha had to do and someone better rescue her.
The whole Unchangeable Future concept of time travel and visions we have here sets us up for a somewhat scary but definitely interesting denouement in the next book. Everything we have says that free will is an illusion, visions of the future are immutable no matter what you do, and everything has already been foreordained. Which is fine but means that we're staring down the barrel of a depressing conclusion to the story, unless somehow the author decides to throw in a surprise.
Also... can I just say... I love Caeden. What a man. What a kind-hearted moron. I might almost go as far as to call him a himbo. He is truly trading on kindness, pure instinct, and absolutely zero knowledge this entire time.
The tension between being a thousand year old demigod and having a tight group of best demigod friends that you love and also that you betrayed and tortured... and being Random Amnesia Man for like a month and somehow having yet again made a tight group of mortal best friends that you GENUINELY do not know that well but have for some reason decided to sacrifice everything for? Mpghmjphfmjghgmfjg. TRULY amazing. Transcendental. Show stopping. Fabulous.
I forget his name but the scene when Venerate Beginning With M captured Caeden and Davian leaped out from nowhere like LET MY FRIEND GO! and M Venerate almost laughed his head off. "Your friend??? Tal'kamar??? Your FRIEND???"
Guys. This was my favorite scene in the whole book, possibly in the whole series. Davian, a small insect in the grand scheme of gods and demigods, finding out the truth about Caeden and NOT CARING. M Venerate's absolute bafflement.
My heart is FULL OF LOVE. Highkey wholesome and heartwarming.
And then AGAIN. That epilogue ruined me. What is going on!!!! What is happening!!! I'm upset and I need the next book!!...more
The first book in this series was fine, but annoying. I really only read it for the Mistborn throwbacks. Wax, Wayne, and Marasi were Ahh, refreshing.
The first book in this series was fine, but annoying. I really only read it for the Mistborn throwbacks. Wax, Wayne, and Marasi were all irritating for different reasons. Too many oh-so-funny attempts at humor every other second by Wayne. Too much mooning about by everyone else.
This second installment was MUCH more enjoyable. Nice, because how many times does a second book outshine the first in a trilogy?
Here, Wax and Marasi seem to have settled in a little. Marasi has her own job with the police, so she has more of a mission and her POV is much less awkward and cringey. Wax is the same, much more focused and less whiny. Wayne is pretty much as he ever was, but the others improving means I can cut him some slack.
The other major reason I liked this book better was that we actually get into some real legacy Mistborn stuff. We get to hear directly from Sazed! We meet TenSoon and some other kandra! And it seems like, given what happened at the end, that we might even be diving deeper into the fundamental worldbuilding. Now have high hopes for the third one to be the best in the trilogy....more
Okay, the first book in this duology had several very important things going for it. And this book did not... really... live up to any of them.
First oOkay, the first book in this duology had several very important things going for it. And this book did not... really... live up to any of them.
First of all, there were the extremely powerful family relationships. Fable and Saint's fraught past at war with their clear love for each other made for a very compelling dynamic. Willa and West's relationship was strong and important too. Then there was the found family of the crew, which didn't vibe quite as well, but still made a good effort.
Second of all, the plot. There were so many intriguing secrets to find out about Saint and Fable and West's pasts, and so many near-death seafaring stunts.
Third of all, the overall setting and aesthetic. The descriptions of sea diving were beautiful, the hard lifestyle of the Narrows felt real, and gem sagery was something I wanted to see more of.
What I wanted was for this book to bring everything full circle. The first installment was so good, it honestly shouldn't have been hard, but now I'm thinking that maybe it was too good. Maybe it didn't leave enough left over for the second part.
The relationships... eh. Fable and West's relationship is dwelt upon a little more, but they spend most of the time being angry at each other. The crew is all angry at each other. They spend a lot of time apart. A new familial relationship is introduced, but Fable's most meaningful interactions are still somehow with the Jevali diver dude who tried to murder her in the first book, and with one of her father's old crew. A resolution of Fable's relationship with Saint is tossed in, but it comes like an afterthought at the end and doesn't have much weight or feel earned.
The plot is strange. Fable gets in trouble. She's saved by outside forces. She gets in more trouble. And some more, for good measure. And fails. And then is saved again by outside forces. Hello, goodbye, the end. Neither she nor the crew of the Marigold really display much agency in the story, and generally just seem to be sort of flailing in the grip of the larger economic and political forces that maneuver around them.
The aesthetic was still on point, but what's an aesthetic by itself? Practically nothing.
I was just puzzled and vaguely disappointed by this one. The story felt like it didn't know where it was really trying to go. There was so much potential here, but the payoff was only acceptable, not great....more
This book had several good things. The only problem was, they all rank rather low on the "things I care about in a book" scale.
The writing? Good. It hThis book had several good things. The only problem was, they all rank rather low on the "things I care about in a book" scale.
The writing? Good. It hit just the right spooky Old West vibe and Isobel and Gabriel's inner voices sounded real; this is impressive when most books that try to do this end up trying too hard and landing in linguistic awkwardness. In this, it was enough to give me a sense of the place and time, and not so much that I wanted to grip the author by the shirtfront and say, "If you use the word 'reckon' again one more time, I will kill you."
The worldbuilding? Very interesting! The Devil's West is between the United States and the Spanish colonies on their respective coasts, and strange phenomena of magic flourish in the middle. There are all kinds of mysterious creatures, people and natural rules that clearly work in the West. It's sort of a mix of ley line/Native shamanism/almost Middle Eastern-esque magic that combines to make an intriguing, understated world.
The problem is, nothing is ever explained. We run into stuff and neither Isobel nor Gabriel knows what it is, and rarely do they ever find out. Gabriel has a secret, and we eventually figure it out, except that we really don't. Isobel is told she needs to understand what the devil is, but she never does. The showdown with the big bad is kind of puzzling in its anticlimax, and I'm still not sure if things were left undone or not. I really wanted to investigate the West with Isobel, but never actually got to uncover any truths. Disappointing.
Isobel and Gabriel's relationship could have been an amazing one. They both clearly liked each other and developed a fun, lowkey mentor-student relationship and it seemed promising. I never got to feel any emotions about it, though. Everything was just understated again and again.
The thing is, this book is slow. Way slower than I expected.
The majority of the book is spent riding the Western ranges, and collecting one single fragment of knowledge every week. I'm not one to complain about slowness if there's a payoff, and that can come in a myriad of different ways. If the relationship dynamics are amazing, who cares if anything happens! If there's a big lore payoff in the end, I'm willing to wait.
Neither of these things were true, though. The worldbuilding and writing were the two strongest things about the book, but writing can never carry a story alone, and the worldbuilding did not ever come together. I needed something more in order to really love this story....more
If you only look at the blurb, you already know a lot. This whole book is just Rin set adrift in a land Well, here we are lads. This was a ROUGH read.
If you only look at the blurb, you already know a lot. This whole book is just Rin set adrift in a land of sixty different factions, all of them bad. Can she find her own purpose? Can she make her own decisions? Can she use wisdom and discernment to guide herself and her friends through a constantly twisting labyrinth of horrors? The overwhelming answer is: no.
This isn't me criticizing the story. This explicitly IS the story. It's part of what R. F. Kuang deliberately communicates in this book, and I can totally relate to Rin. She just wants someone good to follow and take orders from, but there is none righteous, not even one. The self-awareness of this is all that's giving me hope for the end of the trilogy.
So. Now that the foreign enemy is defeated, the country split into civil war, which is actually far too neat a description of the alliances. In this book only two good things happen. That's it. The rest is increasing chaos, increasing aimlessness, increasing pain with no purpose, and it's hard to see any possible outcome beyond just everyone dying and millions of people starving. Also, as a bonus we introduce the colonizers in this book, because we desperately needed to add some racism!
Anyway, I said there were two good things. Those were:
1) Rin being forced to get off opium. I hate addiction storylines so much. I hate them.
2) Kitay and Rin. Because I love Kitay, and also we pretty much don't have any other relationships to lean on for this ENTIRE book.
In the next one, I need a point. A cause. Something. I know Rin was like "we go to war for the South!!!" but excuse me if I don't really trust her at this point, given all the equally vehement vacillations she's gone through already. (She just was disavowing the South like, minutes ago!)
I just need to know there's SOMETHING to fight for. And given that's exactly what Rin needs too, I'm hopeful. I also wouldn't be mad if Chaghan came back and for once became a character with a purpose beyond knowing more things than other people and also antagonizing Rin for no reason....more
This was a collection of five stories set around Earthsea at different times and places.
It took me a while to get around to this book, and it took me This was a collection of five stories set around Earthsea at different times and places.
It took me a while to get around to this book, and it took me a while to finish it once I had started as well. Earthsea is a slow-moving world, and having to reinvest each time a short story ends and a new one begins is why I don't usually read compilations like this. Still, it was overall enjoyable and gave some good background on the world.
I liked the story of Otter and of Ogion and the earthquake, but the only one I LOVED and wished there were a lot more off was Irioth's story....more
Okay. This was a Regency-themed book about a girl entering her first Season secretly hoping to come out of it with a forbidden knowledge of magic rathOkay. This was a Regency-themed book about a girl entering her first Season secretly hoping to come out of it with a forbidden knowledge of magic rather than a husband. Sound cool? I thought so.
It's not actually Regency, because it takes place in a vaguely not-England sort of place that still somehow has a town called Meryton. The big difference is that across the sea there's a powerful country of infinitely more sophisticated black people which holds economic and cultural sway over backward, provincial not-England. Diversity, in MY Regency fiction? It's more likely than you think.
There's also magic. In general, it's a promising setup.
Beatrice is a bullheaded, independent-minded young lady who is determined to be a magical spinster forever, despite her family's wishes. Until she meets "the handsome, compassionate, and fabulously wealthy Ianthe Lavan," as the book's summary says. Ianthe also has a sister, who really interacts a lot more with Beatrice than her brother does. And she's also more interesting, and has flaws, and goals, and a personality. What results is a strange mix of genteel dances/picnics/calling cards with secret sessions of dangerous, illegal, and - let's be honest - stupid magic.
Like, I know these girls have no one to teach them the right way to go about magic because it's illegal for women to do. But oh my word, they almost gave me a stress migraine. Risking life and limb over and over with hardly any forethought! Saying over and over "oh you have to teach me this" and then, every time, running into time constraints and going OH WELL WE DON'T HAVE TIME, LET'S JUST RISK IT.
I was pinching the bridge of my nose and wincing through a whole lot of these shenanigans. It doesn't feel like calculated risk under desperate circumstances. It feels like unrepentant, thoughtless recklessness that got lucky to an extent that would be impossible outside the context of an obligatory-happy-ending romance like this one. This was an okay book that held my attention the whole time, but I think there were a lot of things that could have made it better:
• Beatrice and Ysbeta clearly share one brain cell. I think upping this amount by even just double and allowing them their own independent brain cell might have improved things substantially.
• Give Ianthe a personality. Yes, he's kind and good and generous and open-minded and well-meaning and loves Beatrice. But like, what does he want outside of that? What are his goals for his life, besides just whatever Beatrice wants? Did he exist before he saw her? What are his hopes, his petty likes and dislikes? It feels like he's just there to exist helpfully and lovingly at the edge of every scene, when Beatrice doesn't really seem to deserve it.
• MORE NADI. Build his and Beatrice's friendship! More detail on how a relationship like that works!
• Really lean into the Regency stuff. Don't just use Harriet as a random etiquette prop 3 times. What are the norms, the unspoken requirements, the secret social rules! Let's see Beatrice navigate them, or at least fail to navigate them at first and start learning! Let's see some witty, circuitous conversation! I know we're not all Jane Austen, but we should at least take our best stab at it.
• On sort of the same topic, more Nadi and Regency stuff! After the first cringe-inducing debut into society before Beatrice had an accord with him, I wanted to see so much more of this once they became friends. Imagine the ripostes and shadow victories that could be won over boorish and mean-spirited opponents on the field of Regency social battle with supernatural luck on your side! So many things infinitely more subtle than making people trip and spill things are possible!
• I'm reaching at this point but I would have liked to see Harriet and Beatrice have an actual sisterly relationship beyond just fighting and using each other. I just love sibling dynamics, okay, and it's a waste when they're not appreciated more for the genuine sources of motivating emotion that they are.
I have to officially apologize to this series and also admit to being a total hypocrite.
I resisted reading it for so long because I "don't like the NaI have to officially apologize to this series and also admit to being a total hypocrite.
I resisted reading it for so long because I "don't like the Napoleonic era" and I "don't like sailing stories." WELL.
First of all, I love Pride and Prejudice AND also I loved A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians which is both (almost) this exact era and on top of that has vampires, which of all things I hate the most. Hypocrisy! After all, WHO CARES about the setting of a book, when the characters and relationships are good?!? I can't believe I forgot this most important of all fiction rules.
Second of all, dragons as ships with crews is brilliant and I'm an idiot.
This book is SO GOOD. It's so good.
Almost nothing happens until the sixty percent mark, and by "nothing" I mean "very little violence" because a WHOLE LOT is happening on the relationship side of things and it's AWESOME. Temeraire is a newly-hatched dragon. Laurence is the luckless sailor chosen by baby Temeraire to be his soul-bonded rider for life. (They're not really soul bonded except they actually kind of are!) This leads to shenanigans, as you might expect, as they train in Britain's dragon corps.
Things I loved about this book:
• All the dragons and their different personalities.
• The whole dragon crew thing, like I mentioned. I am still struggling exactly to imagine it, because I think my mental picture of a dragon is too small. The whole thing where there's rigging and a gunnery crew and a lieutenant, etc, is genius. We've seen dragon riders before a ton of times, but never this!
• I don't want to call Laurence a dandy, but his fastidious personality is really funny.
• THE WHOLE THING WITH Granby and Rankin where Laurence totally misjudges Rankin just based on his high-class manners. And then eventually he totally switches them in his estimation of their character and Granby becomes his right hand man. Perfect. Amazing. Stupendous. It's extremely Pride and Prejudice.
• Speaking of which, the whole secret social rules and Laurence's visit to his family and their extreme politeness and the formal way they speak... VERY Regency and I love it. I love the entire vibe. It's amazing.
• The way he calls Temeraire "my dear" all the time LOL.
• Was it just me or did the Choiseul affair seem really understated? Maybe it's just because I've read too many grimdark books lately, but I can't believe he crumbled and sang all his secrets instantly when merely confronted with the SHAME of Harcourt's VERY PRESENCE. Gasp.
• I love Emily and her captain mother. The whole community and culture of the aviators just seems, frankly, awesome and I don't know what Laurence was thinking at the beginning of the book.
I can't say anything here hardly at all. If I had to try to extremely vaguely describe this book, I'd say it's a good blend of Queen of AttolYOU GUYS.
I can't say anything here hardly at all. If I had to try to extremely vaguely describe this book, I'd say it's a good blend of Queen of Attolia and King of Attolia.
Just know that every single one of my predictions was wrong and I am ECSTATIC about it.
Edit 02/23/2024: I STILL cannot believe we got an everybody lives/nobody dies story, guys. It's been 4 years and I am still SHAKEN to my core.
I hope MWT knows how worried she had me. I hope she understands the chokehold of terror she had me in, absolutely sure that Gen was going to fall ill and die a premature death, or any other manner of awful things were going to happen. Especially with the UNCALLED-FOR tagline on the back of the book "history is written by the winners" making it clear the book was "written" from an Erondites POV! Cruel and unusual.
And then she does THIS. I'm aghast, but I'm not mad. How can I be mad when I was given everything I could have ever wanted????
Some spoilery things:
• There is so much literal divine intervention in this book. I thought the gods were getting a little frisky when they manifested just to stop Gen from tossing Pheris out, but then later...!
• All the kings and queens and their relationships <3<3<3 Again, I can't believe we got to have ALL OF THIS. When Sophos douses Gen with a bowl of water... Hearteyes. It's what Gen deserves.
• Pheris is a very interesting POV character. Because he's always hiding, he gets away with "coincidentally overhearing" important plot points in a way that's ALMOST but not quite unbelievable. His development from pretending to be an imbecile to eventually finding his place and his role is great. The part at the beginning where he just goes to sleep and then wakes up like "oh, I've missed Sophos and Eddis's wedding" YEAH THAT'S FINE. COMPLETELY FINE TO JUST MISS THAT ENTIRE SCENE. AND JUST MOVE ON. MEGAN.
• The Eddisians are fully feral in a way that the previous books did not fully communicate. Also it's FASCINATING to see how tenuous Gen's position was in Eddis through the more explicit window opened by this book.
• The Pent ambassador scene... I cannot express in words the perfection of this. Gen walks in and Attolia just yells "RUN" because she knows. She knows. And then Gen being all offended at her and her getting offended right back because SHE was the one who was assaulted. Iconic. Flawless. Unparalleled.
• The one single crime this book committed is yet again not enough Costis and Kamet. When Costis was there he was EXCELLENT, though.
• Attolia in this book in general. We get to see so much more of her personality than we previously have, and she even makes the occasional joke. You can just see how she is THRIVING.
• The entire war. I love the concept of Attolia and Eddis orchestrating everything because of their extensive past experience prosecuting wars, meanwhile Gen and Sophos do who-knows-what down with the soldiers.
• Gen getting a "Henry V in disguise around the campfire" moment.
• I did NOT see the betrayal from the greater powers of the continent coming. I don't know how, but for some reason that suckerpunched me.
The first part is the story of Rin's study and training in the military academy. The second part is The (Second Sino-Japanese) WarWell. This was good.
The first part is the story of Rin's study and training in the military academy. The second part is The (Second Sino-Japanese) War. If you know about that, then you know what kind of horrors to expect. But the book is actually not as no-holds-barred heavy as I was led to anticipate. I've certainly read worse, when it comes to unrelenting depressiveness. Though possibly not worse when it comes to gore.
This book has a decent amount of funny in it. It also has characters that you like and are interested in. The Cike are fun. Kitay is great. Altan is... something that conveys a powerful feeling but I'm not exactly sure what that feeling is. Jiang is awesome and I wish people listened to him more. Even the people you don't like are interesting. Weirdly, most of my emotions are reserved for Nezha and I really hope he turns up in future books. (I won't say turns up okay because, really.)
What this book DOESN'T have is a happy ending.
I'm kind of terrified that there are two more books after this, because how much deeper can we really dive? I know the answer is a whole lot, so that'll be fun....more
Okay. This is literally why we can't have nice things. Adult fiction is such a horrific game of Russian roulette. Sometimes you'll find an DNF at 10%.
Okay. This is literally why we can't have nice things. Adult fiction is such a horrific game of Russian roulette. Sometimes you'll find an adult fantasy book that's just a longer, more complex, darker, more awesome YA story. And then sometimes, you'll find this.
Things in this book that we Do Not Want:
• Matriarchal society where the powerful women oppress the men and use them as sex slaves. • Honestly. Why invent a matriarchal society and then have every female character other than the MC be a horrible, catty rapist? • Women have special magic that is somehow activated through losing their virginity. • Creepy, disturbing focus on genitals. • Even creepier, more disturbing focus on genital mutilation. • Did I mention the sex slaves?
How do you know all this if you DNF'd at ten percent? you might ask. Well, because I already encountered all of this within the ten percent that I read. I shudder to think what lies beyond, for braver and more foolish readers.
You guys know how much I hate DNF-ing.
It's a blot on my sacred honor, and I try never to do it. I've soldiered through bad books and boring books and most of the time I truly believe it makes the most sense, because then if you have to write a savage review, at least you'll write a fully knowledgeable one. But this? Disgusting reverse harem oppression fantasy porn? Couldn't do it....more
Genevieve Grace
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fantasy
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