gxuosi's Reviews (390)

ya know i was expecting sexism and violence given the time. but i wasn’t expecting such cruelty from the hands of a fictional protagonist directed to his wives and children

hey god it’s me for the 2nd time, chronic middle book lover! turns out this is the real middle book of the series and god alive just about nothing happens in it and i loved every single second. cyrus my belovedddddddd.

when suzanne collins first thought of the hunger games, she was channel surfing and was in a feedback loop clicking back and forth between the invasion of iraq and a reality tv competition. she said the two blended together in an unsettling way. which is an understatement. the haunting parallels of then versus today when i started my reread are nauseating and unbearably accurate.

much more cohesive and coherent than the collection “on earth we’re briefly gorgeous,” but still fell to the way side in the last few pieces

really just wildly painful for something with such a nonlinear, hard to parse, collective-we narration interspersed into a lost identity story

this was EVERYTHING to me. i love these emotionally vulnerable men. nothing is quite so delicious as catholic guilt and repressed sexuality coming head to head with carnal lust and debauchery. both danya and ilya were incredibly well characterized; they’re messy, pathetic, defensive damaged goods… and so desperate not just for each other but for liberation. loved that shit.

i think rooting this story in fantasyland (slavic sounding town names that don’t exist) was the right choice. but by utilizing russian specific names and legends paired with very real world months and years, it created a sense of dissonance between what the reader expects of the language used and industrialization of the region they’re in. i spent a fair third of the book trying to figure out if this takes place in the real world due to the months being from gregorian calendar.

waited an awfully long time for this to not really enjoy anything after like page 100

how do you even rate that bro? like? riding a door knob was really just the door's version of knotting if we're being honest

giggling and kicking my feet over how bad i want takeru. frothing at the mouth in rage alongside misaki. yawning in complete fucking boredom over every scene with robin’s lame ass. **its the next morning and i have more thoughts. final chapter including robin was such a underhand to the rest of the book. not only did his arrival feel like an afterthought, anything he had to say felt tossed on last minute to build up a sequel that’s never happening. it was sooo aggravating it almost removed this book from ranking favorite & 5/5.