baru. my love. my apple of my eye. 

god this was so elegant. and so delectable. 

hands down, baru is one of my favourite characters of all time. she’s not exactly likeable (well she is but she also isn’t at the same time) but god is she written well. baru is almost more fleshed out than real people i’ve met. she’s fascinating, and her intelligence makes the story fun.

the rest of the characters were…. Ok! tain hu ofc is the love of my life and i would do anything for her. the rest of the characters were…. Meh! they felt all very same-ish, and especially as the ending got closer, with so many players i couldn’t tell what everyone’s motivations were, if they were going to betray baru or supported her , etc. man i couldn’t keep track at all.

i gotta be honest and say the plot is…. Um. look ok the plot was interesting. but half the time i had no idea what the fuck was happening. at least with gtn i could infer what was going on. there was not much inferring here. there was a lot of looking up reddit summaries. i had vague ideas of what was happening but i defo didn’t understand the nuances, especially getting closer to the ending.

speaking of the ending….. Woah. a lot of ppl i’ve seen who’ve read this have said the end was predictable?? but to me it wasn’t at all. i was soooo confused for a second but when it all clicked i seriously had to pause for a second. wow. i think the ending is great and leaves just enough room for a sequel without feeling like bait for another book.

now one other issue i had with this is the subtext. this is solely a personal issue because im a dumb reader. but i did not get the subtext a lot of times. literally had to message han because i missed the subtle hinting about a queer character (no spoilers here). like i had no idea i’d missed that until i read a summary and then ran to han being like “HUHHHHH”. and that happened a few more times than i’d like to admit. i’m not the brightest reader ok i can get a certain degree of complexity but beyond that i have the reading comprehension of a slug.

the writing overall in this book is…. UGH!!!!!!! /pos. beautiful. it’s so hard to describe just how this is written, but if you’ve read it you’ll get what i mean. it’s so good. it’s so unique yet adds to baru’s coldness yet also allows her to be feeling…… seth dickinson 👏👏👏 LIKE FUCK!!!!!!!

god i can’t wait to read the sequel this was banging. i just wish i was a smarter reader LMAO all the “issues” i had with this were solely because i am a dumbass ❤️ oh well at least when i get to my eventual re-read i’ll probably have an even better time.  

u know a book’s good when ur looking forward to the reread the minute u finished it 💀