handove's Reviews (147)

soft dnf. just couldn't get into it

adam parrish princess diana you deserve the world

kind of charming?

my beautiful white bald irish catholic magic gay princess ronan lynch

reread may 2025 (w/ e)

reread april 2025
oh don't even play. rating updated

first read april 2025
another one thank you

what’s the opposite of a full-circle moment? half-circle? 180-degree moment? that’s what this book was for me. i retract all previous statements about being a hater, having no love in my rotted heart for bald people, never backing down never what, etc.

can everyone unblock me now.

(deep breath) ronan lynch character of all time he’s gay he’s an asshole he’s catholic he’s got a deep parareligious crush which he represses but is pathetically obvious he’s fucked up he’s like a heart attack that never stopped he’s a dreamer he cares so much he’s a weapon he’s trying to make up for it i’m going to walk off a roof

everyone who ever mentioned this series to me is a terrible person because now i just think about his stupid bald ass all day. and i think about ronangansey and i think about ronan/adam and i think about ronan & blue.

(deep breath again) do you ever think about adam parrish do you ever think about how he was privileged and he did not want to give it up and how all he cared about was his autonomy. because i do. and gansey and blue and their stupid fucking flirting and the way he knows he loves her because he can sleep after he talks to her

i do think that this series’ strength is definitely its character work. i still don’t give a fuck about glendower, the niall lynch crime subplot, or whatever maura was up to. i had to ask to understand what happened with noah and cabeswater at the end; it was messy, but at least everything was wrapped up neatly.

with all that said now i also should talk about henry cheng, whose whole situation was kind of a clusterfuck. to start off — his sudden inclusion into the group was off-putting, and should’ve been developed more. i don’t buy that he and gansey had a gangsey-level connection within, what, two weeks? and stiefvater can take back her shitty excuse for poc rep. making racism a whole inside joke for one of your couples is vile.

i think stiefvater got flack for her lack of diversity and shoehorned him in last minute and her majority-white audience just took it with a smile. fuck that. really you can do better

anyway <33 

sometimes your family is the time-fucked version of a welsh king, a half-tree girl, the hands and eyes of a sentient forest, a ghost, and a gay catholic & that’s beautiful to me.

reread may 2025
w/ em
the ronan/kavinsky parts weren't even that good was i on drugs. but ronsey, on the other hand

reread april 2025
w/ amina
miss stiefvater sure does love a good vehicular incident #TheNoticer
updated review link i had too many documents with versions of it floating around

first read march 2025
girl all i know is that i finished this in one sitting at 3am and that fag2fag communication was beautiful

[edit 15-03-25: i wrote 1,700 words about this and most of them are positive & all of them are funny]

mentioned in acknowledgements

contentious one. i've liked all of rfk's previous work so i had clear expectations — beautiful prose, a fascinating magic system, at least one annoying character. she has this special quality to her writing so sometimes you don't even notice when the narrative drags because it's so well-written, like insanely well-written, which is what ended up saving the book.

katabasis chronicles postgrad alice's journey to save her advisor's soul for her recommendation letters (according to the first two pages, anyway), which sounds pretty ridiculous, but [rfk voice] she really really loves magick, okay. i liked alice as a character because of her conviction, but 90% of what we learn about her is all the lengths she goes to for magick and i think i would've connected to her more if someone bothered to explain better why she was so invested in it. girl just do physics atp

strangely i don't think that dampened my enjoyment too much. reiterating the fact that rfk writes gorgeously because this was unputdownable. that said. the book's solid plot was ruined a little by dragging in the middle and alice & peter's plot armor annoyed me. kuang reinvents hell in a way that makes it feel fresh even though it's literally just university. not kidding. pride is a fucking student center.

moving on! if i replaced peter with an intelligent talking burger the narrative would be three-quarters the same. he had zero flavour. his white ass probably tastes like baked beans. nevertheless i LOVED his and alice's banter like no you should not follow immanuel kant's advice on pretending to be in love when he died a virgin at age 79 alice you're right.

the magic — sorry, magick — system is based off logical paradoxes and just barely bends the laws of reality. every time a new paradox was introduced i got happy because they're so good to chew on. i've gone into wikipedia rabbit holes about this. this was a main component of the book and i still wanted more. if others' complaints about katabasis talking down to its readers was about this i will say i am known to— [gunshot]

final thoughts - the romance between alice & peter is lackluster and their reasons for avoiding/hating each other felt a little flimsy. also wished alice got a life. also wished this was longer because god rfk writes so well have i mentioned that yet

br w/ clover 

wouldn't say i adored this book but it was a good ride. i liked the commentary on the beauty industry & materialism & self-worth but thought it was pretty surface level; the highlight of the book was honestly the mc exploring her relationships with her parents (and the grief that came with those) and music. the writing was really lovely, with a sort of disconnected floaty tone that i enjoyed, but i don't think the horror elements were used to their full potential. it goes from 0 to 100 in the last quarter and the body horror is gross but lasts approximately three seconds. overall, i'm glad i read this at all but it was meh. so.