amelianotthepilot's Reviews (835)

this is my first history shakespeare and i definitely struggled a bit. it is a retelling of the trojan war showing both the greek side and the trojan side in bits of battle discussions ending with multiple one v one sword fights. I think it would be quite exciting to see live. 
it focuses on a couple, trolius and cressida, from the greek side. they are set up by cressida uncle but then cressida is sent away to the trojans. trolius follows her and sees her quickly flirting with the trojans so he decides to fight the man that now seemingly has cressidas heart. meanwhile achilles and ajax have prideful debates over who is better and who shall fight hector of the greeks.

i enjoyed it but it is quite long and if you don’t already know about the trojan war and it’s characters i think it would be quite confusing. there is also an extreme amount of long monologues.

honestly not worth reading it added absolutely nothing to the story. at least it was only 50 pages

this is Elizabeth’s perspective and is just random incomplete sentences of different scenes from the past two books concluding with a dream where she interacts with a dead character. this has occurred a few times in book 2 as well and i feel like being able to talk to a dead character is such a cheat in a plot and also takes away from how final death is. 

another great comedy 

bounces between two main love plots.
enemies to lovers,beatrice and benedict, are both witty but hate each other until their friends convince them that the other is in love with them and then they fall in love and marry even despite admitting they both don’t like each other.
claudio and hero are supposed to marry but claudio’s friends incorrectly tip him off that hero is unfaithful so at the altar claudio exposes her and she fakes her death. which is honestly the only way to deal with that. claudio then feels guilt for her death and when they are reunited and the misunderstandings resolved, he instantly marries her.

really cute, seems queer

Orlando wants his older brother to share the family fortune but Oliver refuses and schemes to get Orlando killed by entering him into a brawl he will die in. Orlando somehow succeeds and also catches the eye of Rosalind. Rosalind and her best friend Celia get kicked out of their home and runaway disguised as new people, Rosalind as a man and Celia as his sister. They run to the woods and come across a shepherd who they buy land for and live out their cottage core dreams but then the woods are suddenly full of love letters to Rosalind because Orlando spends his days roaming the woods looking for her. Rosalind dressed as a man confronts him and tests his love. They all live happily ever after and there’s like 4 marriages in the end.

10/10 very cute and funny sheakespeare rom com

The first time I’ve ever felt truly represented in media.

The novel is an easy read middle school level story about Georgia a girl going off to college and realizing she is asexual and aromatic and figuring out how to live with it. Such a cute story of friendship.

this book shouldn’t exist

there’s 0 plot since the villain was defeated in book 1. This book is just a series of sorta cute little gay couple things happening

this book was a trip

honestly the whole thing felt like one big commentary on Harry Potter in a satire-esque way. the main characters of this book, Simon Snow and Bas Pitch, are fictional characters from Rowell’s other novel Fangirl and represent Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy respectively. It is so wild to me that a fictional novel in her fictional novel was discussed enough that she ended up writing it

The book overall is not good, however the plot is exciting and the harry potter commentary is stellar with an exciting end that left me wishing harry potter was sorta like that. It’s not well written but it’s sorta iconic.


Regarding the Harry Potter commentary:

Simon Snow = Harry Potter
-an orphan raised in a bad place, chosen one, extremely powerful wizard but still somehow average, very self centered

Bas Pitch = Draco Malfoy
-rich kid from rich powerful family, hates Simon, is spooky and clever,

is a vampire

, pale and blonde

Penelope Bunce = Hermionie Granger
-Simon’s best friend, know it all, likes to solve mysteries
The Mage = Dumbledore

-extremely powerful older wizard, a father figure to simon, doing some shady political things always, does things for the greater good

HumBug = Voldemort
-evil, causing big magical disturbances across the UK, can only be defeated by his equal(Simon), has a dumb name



****SPOILERS BELOW****




I will now refer to the carry on characters as their hp counterparts.

Dumbledore being Harry’s dad is absolutely an amazing plot twist. It really ups how terrible Dumbledore is the whole time and how he’s evil and doing things “for the greater good” which is not good at all but is also a bad parent and very twisted. 
Harry having an evil shadow is neat and a nice antithesis. Rather than Harry fighting an evil wizard he’s actually fighting the worst part of himself and in the end makes the morally correct decision.
Harry loosing his magic is also a great balance to him being all powerful, being left with wings tho was quite odd. I also liked how he was told he’s not the chosen one and he never was.

another sad queer story

really well written interesting story about a young queer man in Scotland growing up a rough neighborhood of Glasgow. The story jumps between two timelines of him growing up and facing consequences. Characters are loveable and intricate.