essjay's Reviews (635)

I keep saying to myself "no, you're going to read something else when you finish this one," but I'm already queueing up the next book. 

Enjoyed this a lot more than the first one, and I guess I gotta start the third right fucking now. 

Hahahahaha, holy shit. Somehow this was like the litfic equivalent of a Persian telenovela. I thought it was one thing and then at about the halfway point it went completely off the fucking rails.  

Bumping up ¼ star for Michael Crouch's excellent narration. 

This is p much exactly what you expect it to be, unless you are maybe expecting more Hallowe'en (like I was). 

I wish the other "winter holidays" had a bigger role, but [shrug]. 

I might come back to this at some point, but I am absolutely not in the mood for it right now. 

Liked it enough to probably continue reading the series, but not enough to do so immediately. Although it should probably be sooner than later or I will forget everything. 

This remains my least favourite of the series (I think. So far.) and I will probably skip it if I do another re-read before the series is finished. 

It falls into a lot of the urban fantasy tropes that I really don't care about, and even though there are hints at things that will come back waaaaaaaay down the line, it's not really worth it to put myself through reading it again. 

So, why three stars, then?

I continue to love McGuire's Faerie Under (and On) the Hill, and the worldbuilding and overall ✨v i b e s✨ are enough to keep it from receiving anything less. 

Wow. I tried. This is why I don't read blurbs, bc if I hadn't, I might have actually enjoyed this one. But I did read the blurb, and that was the book I wanted to read. 

Too many characters that all have very similar names (after one of the "nine virtues") made it very hard to follow who was doing what. And I'm not one to put something down bc I don't like the characters, but I didn't actually care about any of them OR what they were actually doing. 

If you're going into this thinking it's going to be about a cooking competition in space, skip it. 

Did I start this, then look up a few hours later and realize I'd almost finished.  Yes, I did.  

Was it fun? Yes, it was. 

Was it good? Ehhhhh. 

Am I going to read the next book? Absolutely. 

Probably my favourite Hollows novel in more than 12y. Lots happens, most of it even makes sense! There is still SO MUCH repetition that becomes exhausting to read after a while. Rachel thinks about something with a specific phrasing. The next page she thinks exactly the same thing with only slightly altered phrasing. Over and over throughout the book. Okay, I fucking get it. You said it once, you don't need to keep saying it 80x.