king_lefay's Reviews (252)

I had a feeling that from the opening paragraphs that Oak King Holly King would become a new favourite for me. I ended up quite right. Quick warning, this is going to be a fairly rambling review because I stayed up late to finish this wonderful story and then couldn't sleep after because I couldn't stop thinking about. 

It is a beautifully written book that deftly weaves together two enticing worlds; one, an utterly breathtaking land of fae and magic and exceptional danger, the other, a smoggy Victorian London with no shortage of its own threats to our lead characters, Wren and Shrike. 

I love these two with everything I have. I saw much of myself in Wren and adored reading the love he shared with Shrike. Shrike, who might at first appear a typical dark-haired, brooding fae love interest, but as we come to learn, carries so much depth and gentleness within him. Even the side characters are incredibly vivid and interesting (especially Mr. Grigsby who I also adore with my whole heart). 

It's one of the most romantic books I have ever read, it had so much in it that I personally love from the actually frightening fae creatures to Arthurian legend to just the incredible queerness of it all.

I just can't get over amazing the writing is. I was totally swept away to both worlds. 

My only complaint would be that it does end slightly abruptly. For a book of it's length, I certainly wouldn't have minded a few more chapters before the finale or maybe an extended final chapter

I know in the long run I'm going to be rereading this book time and time again, and absolutely will be picking up the sequel (collection?) as well as other titles by this author who has swiftly become a new favourite of mine as well.

This is a very disappointing book (though the more I think on it the less I feel I should have expected anything from it). There are some interesting ideas, a few cool lines, but overall it doesn't deliver anything unique or impactful. The speedrunning of very basic worldbuilding, relationship moments, and character growth made it read like fanfiction. And I'm not dissing fanfiction, I love fanfiction, but the purpose of fanfiction oftentimes is to explore new ideas or experience more moments with characters we already love. We don't know the characters yet in this book, and there's constantly moments where our MC is like "and I realize now that they're my closest friends, true warriors and companions I would gladly die for" when we only met these characters literally four chapters earlier and there were no scenes to let the readers come to that conclusion ourselves. That's forgivable in fanfiction because we already know this is canon. The lack of depth to these "original" characters or time to develop any ideas made it so that any moments that were supposed to wring out any sort of emotional response fell very flat.
This book suffered greatly from a juvenile "telling-not-showing" writing style. I honestly might have forgiven the lazy trope-checklist that this "plot" amounted to if the writing had been entertaining or any kind of engaging. There is no tension, things are discovered, worried about, then resolved withing chapters of each other (and sometimes within the same chapter!!).
Overall I feel I could describe The High Mountain Court as the diluted essence of any SJM series, the hazy result of photocopying ACOTAR 20 times over, the plucking of all the fan favourite moments over the course of many novels and the shoving them into one far too short book. 
I sincerely hope this author branches out and continues to develop their skills, but I may wait a couple years before I pick up another book by them.

Usually, I drag myself through anthologies. If one story doesn't hit, it seems like something in my brain immediately wants to stop, give up, and move on, and oftentimes I will abandon the book. For Some Will Not Sleep, however, I never ran into this problem. I enjoyed each and every story, even if I wasn't outright terrified by some, they were all incredibly well-written in my opinion. An impressive collection of unique, richly realized voices, and a great variety of monster's and setting (with only a few stories that felt slightly repetitive), and overall cohesive feel to the book. 
My personal favourites were "Where Angels Come In", "The Original Occupant", "Mother's Milk", "Yellow Teeth", and "What God Hath Wrought?". 

Fine book, there were good moments of tension and some good scares. I just really hated Moore, but I don't think it's her fault. I feel like she just suffered from woman-written-by-man syndrome, and worse in that she was the "cool girl" subtype who swears a lot, is crass and vulgar around men, writes naked as an uber-feminist-reclaiming-my-sexuality power move, and doesn't take no shit from no one. Bleh. Honestly, any character that wasn't a young, thin, cishet white man (i.e. Sam) seemed to written incredibly stereotypically and cliched, and at times just offensively (i.e. Daniel, Moore). 
Also just such a long story switching between POVs from like half a dozen characters, only a few of which get somewhat fleshed out that scenes ended up getting repetitive and tedious.
Final thing, none of the twists were all that twisty. 

Cheesy, feel-good, Hallmark fantasy. A sweet time! 

Lots of fun and a handful of laugh out loud moments; almost the vibe of a sitcom or romcom with light supernatural elements. Surprisingly gruesome at times, though in some ways I wish it were even more violent.

I also think it's funny that I found the description of the birth more viscerally upsetting than the attack or any description of Rory's transformations.

Really enjoy this author's style and the way she's used monsters and other supernatural tropes as metaphors for modern day problems in a bright, ultimately hopeful way.