blewballoon's Reviews (763)

This book is so different from Gideon the Ninth, to a nearly painful degree. 2nd person is difficult in general,

even if there is a point to it in this case

. It's a long slog of misery, but my love for the series got me through the tougher parts.

Thank goodness for those AU chapters. I am so grateful we got to spend more time with Abigail, Magnus and Ortus. It was always a thrill to get even a tidbit from one of the characters from the first book. Being with the Lyctors was so dry and awful. It was hard to read about Harrow suffering so much and being totally on her own. The ending comes in a big rush and throws a few answers to questions at you while also spinning off many more. I wish this had been more balanced with less long dragged out and repetitive time on the Mithraeum and a bit more time with Harrow's bubble in the River and Gideon in control of Harrow's body.

I read this to celebrate finishing all of the Bridgerton books and was very eager for something less hetero-normative and hopefully more nuanced and relatable. This definitely delivered on offering a queer perspective on a period romance, which I loved. I hope to continue to find more stories like this. This wasn't exactly what I was looking for from the premise, but it was a nice love story and had a good mix of fun and angst. I think my biggest criticism is that a lot of the side characters felt a bit too flat and caricatured and some of the plot felt like a bit too much. I think I wanted something a little more grounded.

I liked this book more than the previous book in the series, and I liked how this one wrapped things up sufficiently enough that I felt like I could dip out of the rest of the series. My favorite things about these books were the interesting abilities and old photographs, but I think it was just a little too middle grade for my taste. I probably would have liked the series a lot more if I had read it during my middle-high school years, but the characters just felt a little too young and flat for me in general.

I had a hard time getting into this, but once Red started to bond more with the Wolf and the others living in the forest it became a lot more interesting. I liked these characters a lot and I understood and sympathized with their motivations. I enjoyed the feeling of found family with their little crew and

the people who lived on the other side of the forest, cut off from the world but very self sufficient.

  I had a harder time with the interlude chapters. I really hated what was going on with Neve and the characters around her. Overall, though, I enjoyed the fantasy and fairy tale feeling of the story and was happy to have read it. I listened to it on audiobook and it was okay, the narrator was fine but I may have preferred reading it myself since I could have glossed over the parts that didn't interest me.