“You don’t have to love something in order to devote yourself to it.”


“It was an eternal feeling, this sense of being unwelcome. No matter where she was, Effy was always afraid she was not wanted.”

GENRE: Dark Academia Fantasy
RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
FORMAT: Physical special edition
Would I recommend to others?: YES, a thousand times YES! This book is one of my roman empires and I love love it!

Review:
Okay so this is one of my Roman Empire books and obviously I have to say that: I loved it! I loved every bit of it. This is a dark academia book with all the right vibes in it! We follow the story of Effy & Preston as they navigate this world that Reid created. It is a cottagecore world that is very gothic and true to the dark academia fantasy side. I loved the world building, how gothic it was and just imagining the characters in this type of world. Here are some beautiful quotes of Reid building a dark academia, poetic and beautiful world (despite it being so mysterious & dark):

“Yet now, standing in the lobby, the library was suddenly a terrifying place. The solitude that had once comforted her had become an enormous empty space where so many bad things could happen.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Ianto said. Even in the wind, his hair still lay mostly flat.
“It’s terrifying,” Effy confessed.
“Most beautiful things are,” Ianto said.”

From the very beginning of this book, we deal with the issue that is Females are not equal to males and we see this in our two main characters: Effy and Preston. This issue is delved into throughout the book and without giving anything away, we truly see some character development in our main characters and in the side characters in this issue. I think Reid manages to build this issue in a way that is mystical and poetic, yet addressed so well that you feel you are going through the journey & character development with Effy in this regards.

“She had scored high enough for the literature college, but they didn’t accept women, so she had settled for architecture: less prestigious, less interesting, and, as far as she was concerned, monumentally more difficult.”

Reid then continues to develop this story by addressing important issues: Mental Health, how it impacts a person and how others see them due to this. As someone who has mental illness, this journey was so meaningful and healed me in a way I didn’t know I needed. The pain Effy goes through is just touching yet poetic. Isn’t it beautiful? To turn something that’s so painful into something others can admire.

“Effy hated that she couldn’t tell right from wrong, safe from unsafe. Her fear had transfigured the entire world. Looking at anything was like trying to glimpse a reflection in a broken mirror, all of it warped and shattered and strange.”

“If there was anything to attach her true name to, it was this. Her true name held so much sorrow and suffering, but it also held strength. Hope. The yearning to make the old saint’s name mean something new.”

We also get to go through poetic themes in the book, like loving something and appreciating it only because you could wake up tomorrow and it could all be gone:

“The ephemerality of things is that give the meaning. That things are only beautiful because they don’t last. Full moons, flowers in bloom, you. But if any of that is evidence, I think it must be true.”

“The only reason anything matters is because it ends,” he says. “I wouldn’t hold you so tightly now if I thought we could be here forever.”

And the main quote is one where we address a common theme in Fantasy books & one that is reflected in reality: Loving someone & getting to know them is what makes you more prone to getting hurt BY them & you hurting them more:

“There was an intimacy to all violence, she supposed. The better you knew someone, the more terribly you could hurt them.”

And at last, the last major theme is idolising your favourite [inset person] and in this book, it is Effy’s author. We see why this is dangerous for a nation and for an individual and this is such a unique theme! I loved how Reid managed to incorporate this into Fantasy & dark academia and we tend to see the outcome of it throughout the story:

“The man she had spent her whole life idolising had been strange and reclusive, but he had not been coldhearted.”

Ultimately, this quote summarises this book in some ways, in that the characters in it had to endure what nature did. You see the pain the landscape had to go through and at the same time, its reflect on the characters:

“Trees didn’t die when they were cut down, did they? Their daring took months, years. What a terrible fate to endure.”

And here are more quotes connecting the people & the land, the nature that is beautiful yet strong & takes what it wants:

“Water finds its way through the smallest spaces and the narrowest cracks. Where the bone meets sinew, where the skin is split. It is treacherous and loving. You can die as easily of thirst as you can of drowning.” — From Angharad by Emrys Myrddin, 191 AD

“The belief, the hope, and the terror both, had kept her alive. At last, Effy understood the magic of Hiraeth, its curse and its blessing. Hiraeth Manor, the grand thing that Ianto had wanted her to build, would always be an imagined future, a castle in the air. The magic was the impossibility of it. The unreal could never disappoint you, could never harm you, could never falter under your feet. But now the real and the unreal had snarled together and it no longer mattered which was which. Effy was starting down the Fairy King in all his immense power, and she was just a girl clutching a hollow stone.”

Okay, I’ll stop blabbing about ASID and how it’s a beautiful book that talks about so many important themes yet it is still a fantasy book that takes you to another world. Here is a final quote that is covered with a spoiler as it gives away a lot:

Spoiler

“The danger was real. Effy and Angharad had both proven that, with their wits and their mirrors. The danger lived with her; perhaps it had been born with her, if the rest of the stories about changeling children were to be believed. The danger was an ancient as the world. But if fairies and monsters were real, so were the women who defeated them.”