Oooo, I know why people rave about this so much now.

This is a chunkier book than I expected, full of scenes and situations that surprised me for a variety of reasons. Maturity. The graphic nature of it. How deep and dark betrayals were.

That might be why I liked it though - Hale doesn't shy away from the shocking things that shape a character. And Ani's slow growth through the novel was perfect - from her dismissal by her mother all the way up to winning the support of local workers and forcing kings to listen to her.

She's not a physical heroine. She doesn't brandish a sword. Doesn't think up clever plans. Instead, Ani wins by learning to listen to the world around her. To herself. To the boys and girls she works with. To animals and nature.

Listening is quite a power here and it's paired up with the power of worlds so nicely. But what ultimately saves Ani is others' willingness to hear her out. Finding strength in absorbing the world and exposing the truth is exactly the tale I needed to kick-start the new year.

Living in Chicago, I loved learning about the history of the city. And even just the history of the times. Larson covers so much ground about the quality of life, the economic situation of the Long Depression, and the passive-aggressive nature of Chicago vs New York and the US, through Chicago, vs Europe.

Watching the White City being built up from swampy land to a city of the future whose legacy still lives is incredible.

Of course, reading about Holmes and his elaborate steps to control, possessive, and then murder women was also fascinating. Mainly how he continued to get away with it for so long. What he did would be hard to do today, and reading about his set up and elaborate plans was morbidly interesting.

I must be, like, very desensitized to angst (thank you fanfic) because I did not get that 'I just got hit by a bus/kill me now' feeling a lot of people got. But I still found this phenomenal.

What really got me was all the complex relationships between, well, everyone. It was like, every thirty pages things would shift and not in the way you expected. Games over games over games. The ties between people, what they all struggle for, the responsibilities, the rules. Awesome. All awesome.

And Jude was perfect. How fear was such a part of herself she couldn't show it anymore. How she would never truly belong in either world. How family comes first, even if it's messed up. And how while her immediate goals shift, she still always strives for power. Power is safety until you start to amass too much of it.

Of course, I loved the rest of them too. Vivi's rebellions against her dad and guilt at bringing her sisters into faerie. Taryn's own plan of attack to be safe. Madoc's love for his family, but the inability to express it outside of this faerie limitations. Locke's games to ruin all around him. Cardan's vaguely moral line.

Everything just works together *so well*.

The rep in this made me super happy. Alice is biromantic asexual (though there's a section where she wonders if she's grey-a), and that was so, so good to see. As a bi demi, I hold every type of ace rep close to my heart and Kann did a great job here.

I would even call this a 'teaching book'. Slide it towards someone whose mind you want to expand or try to indirectly teach about asexuality. Because I know conversations can be hard for people.

The friends in here are amazing. Alice's sorta-triad with her bestie and her fiance. Alice's own blooming friendship with Takumi, and that transition to something romantic. It's all well played.