Rating: 2.5 rounded up to a 3.

“If adventure comes my way, I will run to greet it. I will grab the world by its leash and make it heel.”

I feel pretty conflicted about this one. The prose was intoxicating. It was honestly poetic and beautiful, which is something I loved about Boneless Mercies. And I liked Torvi, the main character. She’s obsessed with fairytales and stories, and models herself off the characters that she loves. I think a lot of readers feel like that about their favourite characters, and it made her super-relatable. The side characters were a lot of fun too. Ink, Madoc and Sven and her arrows were all lovable, and I adored the relationship between Torvi and Gyda.

Unfortunately, the plot of this book didn’t land with me at all. I read the entire thing because of how beautiful the prose itself is, Tucholke has a way with words that means I’ll still go out of my way to pick up anything she writes, but Seven Endless Forests just didn’t work for me. I loved the breadth and variety of the lore being included, but there was just too much crammed into every page. It felt to me like a series of RPG side-quests all crammed into each chapter to cover as much ground as possible. I liked the idea of every character having their own quest, and the implication that everybody’s a hero, but when we saw every single one crammed into 368 pages, it felt like nothing had enough time to get any depth. And because the quests had to be resolved so quickly to move onto the next character’s quest, everything just felt a bit convenient. Deus ex machina’s everywhere. It really was beautifully written, but I wasn’t invested in anyone’s story and if the writing wasn’t so gorgeous, I probably would have DNF’d it.