I went into this almost completely blind, and thus had no idea that this has been described by the author as a "lesbian stoner buddy comedy". I'm glad I didn't know that going in, because even by those standards it completely missed the mark.

This had the bare bones of an interesting story and world building, but it was completely soured for me by how much I disliked the main character Lana by the end. I don't even care about all the questions this world building raised (WTF is that fairy and human relationship? Are there no men in this world?), I don't even care that it's a satire of how messy and useless our governments can be. I just couldn't STAND Lana. I gave her a lot of grace in the first third because this had promise, but then...she doesn't ever change. At all. She doesn't do a damn thing except get high with her fairy friend and lust after another human. She doesn't change or even try to do anything until she's forced into action in the last 15% of the book, and then...someone else dancing saves the day? I cannot. I CANNOT.

My thoughts are all over the place, I don't really have a proper review for this. 

I think the character work her was in turns very strong, and very weak. Strong because when Asaro is having Soz deal with her PTSD in therapy, it breaks down a lot of who she is and why she is, and that helps her make plot decisions that make sense (to a degree). I didn't much like the romance additions in each part of the book because it only ever felt like Soz liked one person - the others just felt like instalove, or instafriendstolovers - but when she was working on herself and dealing with her trauma, Soz was great. Weak characterization came with how Soz was pretty much great at everything ever AND she's sexy AND she's basically a princess AND she's extremely gifted at empathy/cyberspace work/etc etc etc. She felt like she started as an incredible Mary Sue who eventually got filled in with some real character work. 

No other characters felt great. I just didn't care about anyone else, to be completely honest. Maybe Soz's father, in the end. They all just felt like they were supporting actors playing whatever role the story needed for Soz. 

The plot was fine, but holy hell was it bogged down by the most intense, infodumpy narration I have EVER seen. I don't know if this was a characteristic of 90s sci-fi, but there were pages and pages of just explaining every little interesting thing that the author made up, with no real purpose. Like yeah, tell me all about inversion works...only for the actual mechanics of it to matter in one page at the end. The infodumping absolutely breaks up the flow of the story as a whole. The political plot fared better, at least; I understood decisions characters were making or decisions Soz made to prevent or solve problems. The ending was quite lovely, even if I didn't believe in the romance/character work there.

Really, this was interesting and I'm very glad I tried it out despite having big issues with it. The narrative in the middle of the book that focused exclusively on Soz attempting to face her trauma was fantastic stuff. 

You know that little huh! noise one makes that somehow encapsulates surprise, appreciation, and WTF all once? Yeah, that's really all I've got. 

Witty, weird, and very strong character voice that likely won't work for most people, but you really won't know it until you sample it.

I should have known this was billed as being Gothic in some way before going in, because that would have tempered my expectations a lot - or I would have decided not to pick this up at all. 

It's flowery in an oppressive way (which sort of works for the narrative and the type of storytelling happening her), dreamy and off-kilter, and threaded with fairy-tale like stories breaking up the main narrative. I was intrigued by the overall story, but the prose kept grating at me and I found the ending entirely unsatisfying. 

Gothic is basically an anti-buzzword for me now, and I'm glad I know that now. 

dnf @ page 178. never have i ever been so disappointed that a book i was sure, 100% SURE i was going to love, turned out not to do it for me. all the pieces are there - great characterization, great world building, intrigue by the boatload - but nothing was coming together cohesively for me. not enough to keep me wanting to go back and read. 

maybe i'll try this again in the future, but it's definitely not working for me right now.

"As long as I have a package to obsessively track, I can probably get through anything"

Dang, just come for my throat I guess. 

Thinking of You is a very cute series of comics all with the theme of giving people positive affirmations and showing that not everyone is as alone as they think they are. It's feels like the type of self-help that's more gentle and affirming than hyper fixating on fixing something in your life, and I appreciated it for that. 

I think it is incredibly simple, however. Each comic was its own page, providing a little nugget of optimism or connection in a way that felt like this could have been made into a 365 page a day calendar instead. 

Generally cute, and does exactly what it sets out to do. 

DNF @ 48%. Richard Armitage, we're about to break up buddy. I love you so much, but your audiobooks are not doing it for me.

While I'm intrigued enough to want to know how all 3 stories link up and find out what's going on, I don't care enough to sit through a whole lot more boring story to get there. I don't know how it manages to be boring, but it is. 

DNF @ page 135…this is wildly absurd, and not in a good way. I also hate the art style.