Even more enjoyable than the first. Well written. More interesting and dynamic character. More character interactions.

Gripping prose when focused on the interiority of characters. Insightful and brilliant. The plot felt beside the point of what interested the author.

For me it was pretty much what it says on the tin. There’s nothing much new here if you’re familiar with the genre but it’s perfectly serviceable if you’re into the get good to get revenge arc. I wasn’t particularly invested in the character development from people or the action, personally. But I think it pulls off what it sets out to do.

It’s always refreshing reading fantasy from a non-western centric point of view. The story itself was a bit too straight forward and some relationship dynamics felt strange, but it was enjoyable and I’ll check out the next one as well.

I think the only reasons it didn’t exceed my expectations was it had been hyped up a lot and there’s some first time author stuff going on that I would wager on being not present in the sequel. Either way, if you think this looks interesting to you, it’s worth a read, imo.

I really liked this even though it is a very hard book to get through. It felt like it's written in a style that's reminiscent of something like Homer, but just a bit more up-to-date. It gives the sense that you're going to be getting a heroe's journey, an old-school, classic tale set squarely in western fiction but then it subverts those expectations.

There is no glory or heroism in this story. For anybody. While it's winding some of the best prose I've consumed, it's showing just how terrible human nature is and has always been. How much the America people have in their heads doesn't exist, and why people should be asking more of the country they refuse to view as anything other than soaked through with so much blood and death and overt racism that only the trappings of the nation have been changed, not the soul of the thing.

It was pretty tremendous.

Fantastic characterizations of the characters and the structure that jumps forward and backward in time ultimately struggle against the premise, which has basically become the quintessential gay story. There are so many queer stories that do not focus on the AIDS crisis and do not play on this need to humanize people you should not have to struggle to have empathy for, that this feels out of time and place, despite its strengths.

I enjoy this framing and rule set more than Spire itself. I’ve played in a few sessions of it and find it’s easier to get my head around and the classes are as evocative, but are also more useable than I’d found when playing Spire.

Decent, two column layout with full page, full colour. I find it much easier to read full page games physically. Hate doing it in PDF form because you have to zoom in and the dimensions just piss me off. Always like it when books have a book ribbon too. Nice little extra~

I couldn’t get into the cadence of the authorial voice and the story may have been shocking and more interesting for the time period. As someone who reads and watches a lot of crime specific to these kinds of things, it’s kind of forgettable. It was okay, but not something I found to read very quickly nor a thing I wanted to return to each night. Just fine, for me. Nothing special.