elizlizabeth's Reviews (242)

The poetic irony of this goddamn book. I need to roll myself into a cocoon for months to properly digest it.

It was better than other retellings I've read but honestly I'm giving up on the genre after this. I wish more authors took into account what societies at the time were like, instead of portraying characters with contemporary values and sensibilities.
This retelling, as Circe, was so busy trying to portray the titular woman as someone who can't do or think evil to the point it distorted any semblance of character development for anyone. Phaedra was the only mildly interesting one, but otherwise I was bored for 60% of this. Worse is, if you're trying to be an "empowering" retelling, by removing Ariadne from all knowledge or complicity of ill doings you're rendering her powerless to truly make decisions.

I feel like this wasn't for me specifically but it brings out a couple interesting takes. Would recommend if you're new to existentialist and/or enviromentalist philosophy. I found it to be a bit tone deaf at times but I could see that the author was trying to recognize her privilege and contextualize her discourse accordingly.

Very immersive, the writing style made me feel so disoriented but in a good way, as if I myself were a part of this dystopian world and couldn't know real from fantasy. It is not an action packed, heroic tale, but rather a testimony of an almost passive observer. I personally enjoyed being able to explore this kind of story from a different POV, but might not be everyone's cuppa.

This felt very... experimental. Like the book itself couldn't settle on one genre so at times it was very Romance, but other times it turned Contemporary. I'm not 100% convinced that these two belong together and I feel that it's partly because the book was trying to be "down to earth" while at the same time convincing us that true love exists and it's *here* -not that it can't be done (see: Good Place) but the execution felt clumsy to me.

Clear and simple language to understand. Balances inner reflection with direct points of action.

Of all the books in the trilogy, this one felt the most fanfic-y, I thought the character's plot lines would converge more organically but everyone's pretty much doing their thing. It was a bit frustrating that after so many chapters setting things up, the ending is like ten minutes long and some things don't even get explained/solved.

I don't know who this book is for because it shifts from very technical to self-help anecdotical which makes me doubt the generalizations made in this theory. There are some good points it touches upon and it is an in-depth ethnography, but at times I found it relied on stereotypes or assumed mutual understanding of values to get to the conclusions.
Good for her on raising the issue of commodified emotion tho, I can see how it paved some more modern studies. 

It starts a little slow and oddly with a contemporary lit vibe rather than a fantasy one, but the last two thirds really picked up.

Conflicting thoughts because the cynical approach of the "annotations" contrasts so heavily with the plot that it made me lowkey hate the annotator and wish Princess Bride were a real unabridged book I could read. As a satire it works really well and ages fantastically, I legit felt that a bitter little twitterman was commenting on an age old classic and ruining it in the process.