this was just not hitting for me at this time

I am a big fan of pretty much everything I have ever read by Garth Nix and this short story collection is no different. It turns out you actually can make a male character who desperately wants to get laid but also still respects women.  

Also Love Mister Fitz, a tans puppet who just takes whatever gender suits him best for the task at hand. The relationship between him and Hereward is so good, I love that it allows Hereward to both read as the fully trained and skilled warrior he is, but also the little kid that Fitz still must see him as given the puppet's long lifespan. I would love to have more stories of the two of them! 

There was a lot of potential here, but I fear discussing oppression and fascism with nary a mention of queer or disabled folk gives me the ick. If the US of A put instituted an act that allows the government to take away children those two groups would end up on the top of the list regardless of which minority group was scapegoated in the first place. 

This book would also have me believe this universe has few to no childless adults and no one is using the internet as a form of resistance. If ten year-olds are getting taken away from their parents you best believe they know where to go on the internet to talk about their location. It would have been much more believable to have these kids in secret compounds or something (ei the way the government does it now), but these kids are just out there with regular families going to school with friends who have cell phone with the internet on them. 

For the most part I like the way librarians are portrayed here, with two addendum's: 
1) They would not look down as a whole on any other acts of rebellion, we know that a movement takes all people and types of resistance to work
2) Library books banned by the government are absolutely being saved somewhere, Librarians aren't out here composting important works of literature with out finding hiding spots where ever they can.

ALSO THE INTERNET EXISTS IN THIS UNIVERSE! Some one in another country would absolutely be running a website with all this kid's mom's poetry one it. The idea that he has to find it by asking for people to tell him what they remember is so silly. Like he can just go to the Minecraft library (www.uncensoredlibrary.com) and it is probably there!

In spite of all the complaining I have just done, the writing for this book is great. It was easy to read so in spite of the bits of plot that aggravate me I think this is perfectly a readable novel that for some would be a great first taste of dystopian fiction. 

this was a very enjoyable listen, the poetry is both approachable and uncompromising 

This read was an absolute delight

It’s difficult indeed to pull of a romance between characters from separate classes, especially when the character from the oppressed class spend the entire book full of self loathing

only to be proven correct that the pretty blond princess is worthy of the spring of magical power when our (jewish coded) protagonist is not worthy. Beautiful Sylvia literally committed war crimes, while our main character is basically guilty of lying and occasionally being a bitch.

To farther gripe the author continually has to back track to tell us information that should have been told to us as it was happening, leaving us forced to believe that we are  abandoning friends behind without help or shelter until chapters later when we get updates that they did indeed provide aid, don’t worry.  

This book had a lot of potential and should have gone through a few more rounds of edits and maybe dropped a concept or three. I enjoy faeries and romance and political intrigue and murder mysteries and unique magic systems and complex friend groups and stories about oppressed groups and folk tales and exploratory missions and war and dark academia and enemies to lovers and ghost stories and imbalanced power structures, and betrayal……..

But maybe not all at the same time. . .

this was a bummer, but in like a philosophical way