booksthatburn's Reviews (1.46k)

The more I realized what was happening in the plot, the less I liked it. First, the things I liked: Razia has a consistent manner of referring to her past as a prince, and a confident way of presenting herself now as a hirja. Trans identity is complicated, and reading a story starring someone in another culture with an experience I partially recognize is nice.

I love heist books and was hoping to love this too. But I find myself realizing that part of what I love about heist stories is someone enthusiastically using their wits to accomplish something difficult and dangerous. Razia is stealing on behalf of someone whom she eventually realizes is exploiting her, and she doesn’t want to do it. She recognizes that now that she has a patron there’s no reason to steal, and it’s actually a terrible idea. She doesn’t want to do it, and I don’t want to read it. Also, it’s hard to feel good about the romance plot when she’s a child being sexually exploited as a courtesan, and the romance is with an adult (at least as far as I can tell) who starts out as a client.

THE WICKED BARGAIN follows Mar after they survive the storm which (at El Diabolo’s seeming behest) kills their father and his crew when the terms of his bargain with El Diabolo concludes. Mar is picked up by a different pirate ship and works to conceal their magic as they become closer with the captain’s son, Bas. They have a few months to make a deal with El Diabolo or lose their father forever, but then a demonio named Dami shows up and offers another way to make a deal. As time runs out and the pirates run into trouble, Mar must figure out how to accept their own magic. I’m extremely happy this this has a nonbinary main character and no gender-related moment where someone else “catches” them or “figures out” something based on their body. There are scenes which emotionally have some similarities in terms of the danger of discovery and uncertainty about the other person’s reaction, but they’re all related to Mar’s magic rather than their body or gender. 

The worldbuilding has a degree of specificity which is enough to place it in history (with the addition of magic) but generally avoid infodumping. It is in a particular time and place (the Caribbean in 1820), but what matters emotionally to Mar is their personal timeline and recent tragedy. There’s frequent use of Spanish, enough to make the characters fluently multilingual without making the text difficult for readers (like myself) with little to no understanding of Spanish. It seemed like anything of importance to the plot was either slightly paraphrased in English after the Spanish portion, could be inferred from other characters' reactions, or took the form of small words and phrases intermingled with otherwise English sentences and were understandable from the surrounding context. The important thing from all that is that the characters’ speech supports the other forms of worldbuilding to create the setting and feel.

The first half is pretty good, but this comes alive in the second half as the setting changes and the dangers became more concrete. Mar is tense from almost the start, but it takes a while for them to open up enough to explain why they're afraid of more than just discovery when it comes to using their magic. Mar's rapport with Bas takes a long time to build, though they interact frequently because Mar kind of becomes Bas's assistant. Their early interactions with the demonio, Dami, are even more strained because Dami is trying to get Mar to do several things they refuse to even consider (to use more magic and to make a deal). How much I liked each of them tracked pretty closely with how Mar's feelings changed towards them, as initially annoying interactions made more sense when additional context was provided.

I don't like the exposition style, which (at least very early on, since I didn't get far) is precocious child Baru explaining to random adults what she's figured out about how the world works.

Not a good fit for me.

Not a style I like.

I love everything about this except that it centers around a triggering topic for me and I had to stop.

Just not enjoying it and not intruigued.

The first one wasn't really my thing, and I think I don't like "will they get back together" plots where their original romance was brief and one person truly became awful in the meantime. 

As the penultimate book in the series, this returns to Darren's hometown to answer what happened to his family after he died. He also learns what happened to his friends, since around twenty years have passed by now and they've more than grown up. There's kind of a new storyline related to the people who visit the Cirque and what happens there, but even that ends up being a way of tying up loose ends. Darren has changed a lot since the first book but he's pretty consistent with the most recent ones. It would not make sense to start here as this book is all about addressing answers to old questions and beginning the final confrontation which will determine the identity of the Lord of the Shadows. 

The plot focuses on Darren dealing with being back home, and how much he dips into his old life (or not). The way he navigates the temptations of being home shapes what happens next. Darren's body also begins the final transformation from half-vampire to full vampire, which will mark the physical severing of his few remaining ties to humanity. A lot of the story doesn't make sense without earlier context, or it's specifically a "where are they now" conversation scene. All of it makes sense for the penultimate book of such a long series, but means that the only interesting things to discuss are major spoilers (of which there are several). There's a very dramatic kidnapping and a cliffhanger which shakes Darren to his core, so I'm excited to get to the finale and see how it all turns out.