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crispycritter's Reviews (516)
KRELSEY - I’m really supposed to believe the most emotionally abusive toxic relationship is magically fixed with anal and one single heart-to-heart? I should never have left Immortals After Dark land.
This was basically a mafia romance with vampires and witches. Do I like mafia romance? No. I loathe it. Do I love Abigail Kelly? Yes. Very much so. It pains me not to give an Abigail Kelly book 5⭐️ but this is a it’s probably not you it’s me. This didn’t slap quite like her other New Protectorate books do.
Joe Abercrombie delivered some awesome characters! Was this perfect? Nah. But it was entertaining as heck. Reserving full judgment until I get through the rest of the trilogy. This book was mostly setting up the next two, which I have feelings about. Feelings not specific to Abercrombie but fantasy in general. In what other genre do we forgive authors for making us read a 500+ book to establish a character’s backstory and the politics of a region?!?!
Just me, giving Abigail Kelly another 5 stars, wondering why her books are not more hyped. People are sleeping on these. Do you like Immortals After Dark? You’ll really like these books.
So torn on how to rate this. I feel like S.E. Wendel took some of the criticism of Halfling to heart in this book and it feels super duper different from Halfling. I really loved Halfling, despite it's faults. Ironling is a lot more plot (that's fine, I guess), less deranged monster smut (I actually said to myself at one point, "wow, there aren't nearly as many fluids in this book than there were in the last one." I don't know if I should be proud of my observation skills here). Despite the adjustment in content, this book still had some of the craft issues from the first book (far too long, lots and lots of repitition). Hakan was basically Orek with shorter hair. He was deaf in one ear, a fact that seemed to come and go as it pleased the plot. We just glossed over him teaching her to sign? He says NOTHING ROMANTIC TO HER in his hand letters? Tsk tsk.
There was this potential conflict with him buying land and wanting to settle down and have a family there, literally 'steal her away' from her life as an heiress. Her wanting to remain in her position, not marry, not have kids. We, as readers, knew how in conflict these desires were. The characters really didn't. All this was conveniently resolved with zero friction between the two characters. The bad guys somehow moved these disparate values into sudden harmony. Problem solved!
Ok now that I'm typing this out I'm realizing what the issue was - there was so much potential for there to be internal conflict between Hakan and Aislinn - and everything got resolved by big fantasy action external forces. It was unsatisfying. Hakan at one point muses that if he'd tried to run off with Aislinn and take her from her duties he would have lost her, she never would have forgiven him. He realizes that his idea of the perfect mate and perfect life were poisoning the real, messy love in front of him. Cool realization, bro. Y'all never even talked about what you imagined life together might look like. Not even one conversation? Wouldn't that have made Hakan's sacrifice even more impactful? How could Aislinn REALLY have appreciated how much that land meant to him if he never ever shared what he wanted to do with it (other than bang her in the meadow in spring). Hear me out, hear me out, how much more impactful would Chapter 32 have been if our Orc hero had tried to kidnap her, it had TOTALLY backfired, and he sold his land and did all this other romantic stuff to make amends, and then she chose him? Maybe she lowkey could have actually been considering accepting Lord Beheady Spaghetti (can't remember dudebro's name) because she saw no way out of her predicament? I dunno. The stakes weren't stakin. And I am now rambling.
The best part of this book was Aislinn. Our FMC from Halfling, Sorcha, suffered from being all things all at once. She was everything, she had all the good qualities. She was a fictional chameleon. Aislinn felt real and flawed. Much stronger character work.
Devastated to learn that S.E. Wendel is one of those authors who rates her own books 5 stars on Goodreads.
There was this potential conflict with him buying land and wanting to settle down and have a family there, literally 'steal her away' from her life as an heiress. Her wanting to remain in her position, not marry, not have kids. We, as readers, knew how in conflict these desires were. The characters really didn't. All this was conveniently resolved with zero friction between the two characters. The bad guys somehow moved these disparate values into sudden harmony. Problem solved!
Ok now that I'm typing this out I'm realizing what the issue was - there was so much potential for there to be internal conflict between Hakan and Aislinn - and everything got resolved by big fantasy action external forces. It was unsatisfying.
The best part of this book was Aislinn. Our FMC from Halfling, Sorcha, suffered from being all things all at once. She was everything, she had all the good qualities. She was a fictional chameleon. Aislinn felt real and flawed. Much stronger character work.
Devastated to learn that S.E. Wendel is one of those authors who rates her own books 5 stars on Goodreads.
“With all due respect to the agreement, fuck the agreement.” Paper rings. Feeeeeelings. I was so scared this book wasn’t gonna live up to the hype but it did. This entire book was just delicious, delicious angst and beautiful prose.
What this book does incredibly well that a lot of other romances get wrong: showing characters going to therapy and working on themselves. A lot of times this comes up during a third-act conflict and we're told they are all better (or better enough to be in a relationship with the other character). I'm often left, as a reader, wondering if things have really fundamentally changed? I also wonder if these authors have ever been to therapy and know how it works. And feeling like the Happy For Now I'm being sold is barely solid. It's deeply unsatisfying. Here we get to learn about all of the BS that happened in Eli and Georgia and are given the whole book to really experience how much both characters have changed.
Petition to turn this into a full-length novel so Nikolai can truly grovel and there’s time to actually explain Myst’s gold chain curse
Priest was at least funny. This book was predominantly strange monologues about how it was actually the best, most pious decision for this almost nun without a fully developed prefrontal cortex to go on a month-long bangfest with her brother’s best friend who knew her as a baby and is 15 years older than her. Huh? The mental gymnastics were backflippin and handspringin. It felt like Sierra Simone didn’t want to fully lean into the taboo aspect of this book and was trying to find ways to convince everyone it was actually totally cool with the Catholic Church and Jeebus what happened. *sigh* May more authors have Penelope I-wrote-a-step-cousin-incest-love-story Douglas’s balls. JUST COMMIT, PEOPLE. I want nonsense. I don’t want nonsense parading as wisdom.