The incest plot was way too heavy in this.

- Inappropriate explicit sexual scene between minors
- Lazy world-building: A bunch of French people running around historical Europe (but instead Kristoff makes up a bunch of empire names rather than just placing them in our world); Christians vs Vampires
- Language is reminiscent of teenage boys who think crass dialogue and sexism is what masculinity is...

If I were Dante, the reading of this book would be one of my circles of Hell. I suffered. And When the Moon Hatched might have convinced me to finally start rating DNFs. 🤣

Actual Rating: 0.25
DNF @ 40%

If you want my play by play thoughts, here they are but no promises that there aren’t spoilers…the plots pretty predictable though so 🤷🏻‍♀️ 

• The descriptions have no function beyond the author trying hard to sound lyrical and prove she knows what a simile is
• The gore is so overdone it begins to be comical. Characters’ deaths take full chapters and somehow they can still hold full conversations when they really should have died/passed out immediately 
• The mentions of poop, shit, shat, turds. Advice: do not make it a drinking game.
• The love interests are classic: man in need of a good therapist that is 1 1/2 feet taller than our petite perky-boobed protagonist 
• Female/male gives alpha male with a podcast energy …ch 15 “if whipping a female makes you feel like a strong BOY.” You have the word BOY in this male/female world? What?
• Raeve is a terrible assassin 🤣 no common sense or demonstration that she knows what she’s doing
• The language: “dae” you mean DAY? “Skin suit” you mean clothes? 
• One-folk show” and “slumber terror” and “full of dragon shit” 🙄 so you want them to speak like we do but make it sillier
• “Come forth to the light” 😑 What in the King Arthur? why are we weirdly old English randomly and speaking like they are from 2024 the rest of the time
• Him smelling her. I can’t 🤢
• Her sass and tough mouth/snark is not earned at all; the incompetence 
• The main character is a violent immature teen on an adult woman’s body
• “Wow these baby dragons and larger and stronger than I expected” and it turns out it’s the love interest 😑 “lifts me like a sack of grain” 😑 “he looks down upon me” while she is on his lap? “Stack of muscles that feel more like rocks” 😑 “he’s the biggest male I’ve seen, in more ways than one” she aims to kick him in the nuts and things “considering the size of my target, I shouldn’t miss” GOD SHUT UP.
• The number of times she threatens to kill the love interest is so numbing by the 100th time, especially bc all she does is moon over his body; and him “say my name” 🙄 and then he proceeds to not say her name but calls her moonbeam 🤢🤮
• Ew ew ew is this dragon ride the one horse trope?? 🤮 okay false alarm
• She speaks like a teenager and he speaks at times like he’s from a different time. yuck.
• Why does he pick up and toss her around so much 😒
• Sticking their tongues out at each other. Are they children?? I swear this is so YA it pains me
• Why doesn’t she ask him why he randomly gives her the nickname moonbeam. Ugh Seven Year Slip flashbacks
• All she does is look at his body. His MANHOOD. WHY DO WE HAVE THE WORD MANHOOD BUT USE “FEMALE” and “MALE”??
• The predictability of this narrative, with who Raeve is, her history with Kaan
• I’m suffering.
• I love how she calls herself cursed when she has been the luckiest mf I’ve ever seen
• If she says “tha-dump” one more time
•She may actually be the dumbest protagonist I’ve ever encountered. It’s exhausting to follow her POV
• I’m already tired of him trying to get her to remember who she is and who he is 🙄 reminds me of that Sarah macadams and tanning chatum movie that I never watched
• “Im not usually so bad at slaughtering” LOL says the worst assassin in existence 
• “She snorts soup through her nose laughing at such a random moment and “it feels good. I never know it could feel so good.” Dear god.
• “He doesn’t want X Y or Z. He wants something worse…me” 😑 and then he feeds her like a child…I mean, youngling 😒 What.

I was looking forward to this book because cli-fi is one of my favorite subgenres. I love when ecological elements and climate change are included in novels, especially storylines following Dystopian structures. However, I elected to stop reading this book at about 40%. The opening chapters following the family's preparations for Hurricane Wanda was interesting, but I was immediately turned off by the father completely disregarding and belittling his wife's fears and requests to evacuate. I also felt uncomfortable with their dominant "fixing" man meets vulnerable traumatized woman backstory. It was all extremely depressing from the beginning. Not to mention that the only two characters I felt any kind of investment in ended up not surviving the storm. 

Brooks-Dalton dips into magical realism with the character of Wanda, but her abilities seemed vague up to the point I stopped reading. The author is clearly a gifted writer; she writes beautifully and characterizes thoroughly. With that said, I don't think her skills as a writer outweigh the issues and disenchantment I had with this book. 

 

As the first world war rages on, British spy Fiona Figg has been sent to Vienna in the hopes of tailing the ever-elusive Black Panther, Fredrick Fredricks, before he can assassinate his next target. The catch? He invited her to follow him…Trap or not, she will soon find out. 

I received an e-book copy of this title via NetGalley, and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised upon beginning it. First off, I did not read books 1 or 2  in the series prior to reading Villainy in Vienna, but I never felt deterred by that. In fact, the few necessary details provided by Oliver left me intrigued and wanting to go back and read the earlier publications rather than feeling alienated or left out of the loop. Friends know this about me: I am very weary of modern cozies that give the amateur detective/spy a first-person narration. Usually, I find the narrators too artificially “quirky” with a forced humor and personality. Another reason I steer clear of first-person detective POVS is because the author’s effort to keep clues from me but not from the detective…while I am literally in the detective’s head…is quite annoying. With all of that said, I really like Fiona Figg, the amateur spy and narrator in Villainy in Vienna. I didn’t find her internal monologue overbearing like I usually would, and I believe the setting helped with that. Golden Age detective fiction has a reserved air around it, and I believe Oliver blends this quality nicely into the narration as the book is set in Vienna during World War I. 

Speaking of the setting, I liked how Oliver  immerses her readers into the Viennese culture and the war-time politics and paranoia. The atmosphere felt authentic and intriguing. It made me want a Viennese coffee badly! I am also now dying to attend a masquerade ball…perhaps “dying” is the wrong word choice. Speaking of, I appreciated the variety in mysteries that Oliver includes within the narrative. We have the overarching plot that involves espionage and assassination attempts, but also smaller mysteries involving a dognapping, a stolen notebook, and a trolley accident. 

A few aspects of the book that made me like it but not love it include the slow pace of the novel. The beginning felt well-paced and packed with mysterious incidents, but with the many times Fiona plans to investigate, there seems to be very few victories in gathering necessary information until two-thirds of the way through the book. I also found my deductive skills outdid that of Fiona in a few instances where I caught on to things a few pages before she did. 

I ended up DNFing this book at the 70% mark because with these criticisms and the above love notes, I knew pretty early on that I would give this book 3 stars...so taking the advice of YouTuber With Cindy, I didn't see the point in finishing the book if my rating was likely not going to change by the end.