This was pretty solidly a 3 for me. I liked the prose and characterization. Nothing wrong with it at all. I just, for some reason, couldn’t connect with the characters very much, which for me, if history is any indicator, usually means the theme didn’t do it for me.

Dnf 10%

Maybe something to do with the narrator for the audiobook, but he seems okay? I just don’t like the authorial voice and became extremely bored with the premise and framing. I could see classic fantasy people liking this. They seem to have an endless supply of patience with pacing. But unfortunately I just couldn’t find anything to be interested in here.

I may try the actual book at some point… but my physical TBR is 500+ deep, so, tbh, it will probably never happen unless I get it as a gift, or something.

I liked the show well enough that I thought the book might be interesting, if it handles the subject matter right. But actually the show understood what was interesting about the book so well, it is far superior at presenting it and tweaking it into such a better story. I didn’t even want to finish the book, tbh.

This book wasn’t at all like I thought it would be, to great effect! It’s a unique blend of SFF in that it’s both an ancient Asian culture milieu fantasy world but also a science fiction future with technology. Kind of like some anime, maybe? A kind of historical fiction, I guess? Whatever it is, it works pretty well. There’s some hand waving in the worldbuilding but I honestly don’t care to get into the granular details of settings like that as a reader regardless.

Primarily, it’s a character study set in the tensions of war time, within a traditional and regressive mountain town. We follow a mother and wife with a past and her son, and through that lens the rest of the cast. It highly effectively explores hard subject matter through that gaze—on top of actual war—such as toxic relationships, not just rooted in masculinity but a myriad of ways in which tradition is both good and bad.

It has some seriously fantastic cohesive themes and character work. I would have been happy with just a family drama exploration. I was enthralled from the get go.

With the addition of war and physical conflicts, which are written hauntingly well, this book manages to hit incredible heights of excitement and sadness. The magic system and world building is developed enough that you feel like every interaction is grounded and flows and follows what preceded it well.

Sometimes it feels overwritten and hand-holdy, especially with some interactions. I think the author could have trusted the reader a bit more, given it’s an adult fiction book. It felt like it was coming from YA sometimes because of the specifics of innocuous details or the reiteration of things you already know.

However, this would have easily been a 5 star review for me if it hadn’t felt like the conclusion had been reached after the chapter The Duel. It was just such a perfect chapter and tied up so much of the themes and plot, that at most maybe one more chapter to tie a bow on it would be good; except that it kept going long after the emotional punch had landed, and then used up the momentum to kind of tie things together that didn’t really need it, at least for me. Also seemed like it set up a plot line for later, but most of it could have been the opening chapter of an entirely different book that picked up where this one ended.

Regardless, it is a fantastic read and my expectations were trounced. Highly recommend it. Very moving. Sometimes incredibly horrific, but not for the sake of shock and awe.
Content warning for domestic abuse, violence against children, rape, Graphic Gore.

2.5 rounded up.

Good flow, serviceable prose, interesting setting and worldbuilding. Great action scenes, better than plenty of fantasy I’ve read. Predictable plot structure, fun invoking of tropes. One or two classic subversions. Where the wheels come off almost completely for me is the character work.

I get that for some people the kink is precisely loss of agency here, but Poppy doesn’t really feel like she’s empowered just because she’s been trained to fight. Every person she comes across probes her boundaries, especially Hawke, of course. I don’t find Poppy all that believable as a character. There a few stand out good scenes to characterize her and they’re genuinely moving. But then her reactions in regards to Hawke are so contrary and weird. She is conflicted, sure. But the entire conceit of the character is that as a reader you essentially find the loss of agency and inability to know what boundaries are or assert them… even as she thinks through bypassing them and calling herself an idiot all the time. It’s really annoying and sometimes icky at a meta level, imo.

Meanwhile Hawke, the older man is I think written to give the veneer of consent, but continually proves with his actions that he’s not about it at all. It’s careful so that it’s not ownership over Poppy, but at the same time actual consent isn’t really possible due to the circumstances, which are spoilers.

The book is at its best when it straddles consent and fun, sexy boundary pushing. But there’s too many subversions of it. I was looking forward to the sex positivity to be empowering but it never happens. Even remotely. In every estimation Hawke is a bad person and it would have been more interesting for it to be an outright descent for Poppy than just handwave so much stuff because of her age and manner of upbringing.

2.5 rounded up

Mixed feelings about this one. It neatly ties up plot lines, for the most part. Most notably the ones started in the previous book, of course. But there’s also some throw backs to the original trilogy, too.

The Nina / Hanne plot line in this one ended really well, even if their actual plot itself was somewhat boring. As was the case with a lot of them in this book. A lot of preparing for war and tying everything up. While it was okay, it wasn’t as exciting as King of Scars by half, and it most likely ends exactly as you’d expect.

It feels like the Grisha trilogy ending. It somehow feels a little too neat and a bit unearned. And honestly, redemption arcs, in the year of our lord 2021, I am honestly not here here for unless it’s restorative Justice dictated by the people harmed.

If not for the women of the story this would have been 2 stars. Well, had I not been invested in Zoya and Nina in particular, I doubt I’d have finished it at all, to be honest. As Nikolai is maybe one of the most static protagonists of all time. I’m not sure he suffered a crisis beyond conquering the monster within. His personality and traits have been absolutely the same, even when “monstrous”. Thank Heaven for the womens’ character arcs and there’s a bit of inclusion here that left me feeling really positive about.

Update: the stuff that bugged me still bothers me days later, so downgrading it from 3 stars to 2.

Let’s talk about Verity.

This seems to be pretty polarizing, and I thought it’d be down to how sex was handled or maybe some weird stuff with consent. But turns out the ending really is just something you’ll buy into or not, imo, so it makes sense to me now. Personally, I thought the ending hampered an enjoyable thriller with horror elements and I had expected it to be mostly symbolic or something else; something more cerebral.

Though, in retrospect, perhaps precisely because so many reviews were like ‘that ending tho!!’ I was thinking about the most unlikely scenario, and so wasn’t that far off the mark, in the end. I generally like books that withhold catharsis. But I also like my fiction to be capital a About something. Which this tries to do, and I’m not all that convinced actually does? There are alternate endings that could have communicated a clear message that would have actually made it pretty interesting; particularly about grief, shame, misogyny, or guilt.

Instead it puts all its eggs in the twist basket and when you really look at it, you pretty much have to suspend a lot of disbelief and Like The Twist, or else be left a bit cold and unsatisfied. Because I was looking for it and was partially right, plus I actually quite enjoyed it up to the end, I came away liking but not loving it. 3 stars.

***Spoilers beyond here***
Okay, so what did people guess was happening here? I actually really want to know.

I was pretty sure the husband had read the manuscript and had either killed his kids and attempted to kill Verity, which is why she was “comatose”, up until the first sighting of Verity. At which point I thought he might be drugging her so she kept being bed ridden but was fighting to move and such sometimes, and biding her time to jet with her kid.

That manuscript did its job for me from the get go. I didn’t buy it whatsoever and I actually liked that it subverted the straight male fantasy of a cock hungry woman, and how if women actually were like that, it’d be horrific. And just not surprising at all that the husband didn’t know his wife at all. And the first thing we find out about the husband was that he’s pretty desensitized to car crashes, is emotionally unavailable, and acts “strange”. And then oh btw, his wife was in a car accident. Okay killer.

Where the real suspension of disbelief comes in for me is that she could actually pretend to be like that, hooked up to machines and with a nurse and everyone’s just like naw yeah she’s comatose for sure. I’ve seen “scans” of her and all that. Obvs the husband lied, but like, the nurse should have been aware and tests would have ferreted out that? And like, I didn’t do the exact timeline, but just waiting for cash to leave feels real thin? Probably got mad money from the books.. couldn’t transfer it when the husband is busy and peace? I dunno, pretty thin.

And then the added dimension that it was SO close to being more interesting as relating to possibly using events as symbolism for the ways in which the husband, let’s face it, Probably gaslit or was abusive to his wife. Certainly has something to say about institutional patriarchy with how the women behave. But still. Feels so close to something more substantial to me, no?

Looking at it as one story, this very much depends on your investment in Nina and Zoya, or, for some reason, Nikolai. If you want to know what happens to either of those, and are just very invested in knowing how things tie up, hit it. There are some good moments, some strange pacing—especially back to back. But it is certainly attempting to wrap everything up nicely and is a love letter to fans. Plenty of cameos and throwbacks.

I liked it more than the Grisha Trilogy and less than the Six of Crows Duology.