was super invested the whole time and it just flew by but like not gonna lie when we got to the point where every chapter was 1 page and they all had a twist i did start rolling my eyes. kind of wish we didn’t have the day-after timeline but i guess we couldn’t have

Jake, who TWIIIIIST didn’t die!

be there. enjoyed the misdirects but did NOT enjoy how on the nose and just basic some of the writing was in the individual povs. like idk man maybe we could have had good prose as well as twists and turns.

ALSO!

while the whole thing with the birds was super underwhelming — because why wouldn’t you have one of them orchestrate it, like maybe eddie’s mum, instead of or WITH jake ? — there was soo much potential. im annoyed that we didn’t get vigilante justice middle aged ladies except as a final twist and a teehee line at the end

Things I looved:
- writing style! This is a DEBUT?? i literally would not have guessed based on the gorgeous gorgeous writing. i will say there was the occasional metaphor that made me go “??” because it was very Evocative of a Vibe but not based on a frame of reference i had, but this is not a bad thing imo
- the first 30% - i was HOOKED the whole time Zhu was like surviving and being in the monastery, the whole micro-snapshots of her growing up
- OUYANG!!!! a foil of all time actually. and dude do i ever love a foil. but even beyond that he was such a delight to follow to the point where sometimes esp during the middle section id get more hype for an ouyang chapter than a zhu chapter #sorrynotsorry. and like imagine being such a slay foil that you then get your OWN foil
- and speaking of: queer historical fantasy that is both aware of historical circumstance and how someone within a different framework than us might think about their queer identity, AND insightful about that exploration from a modern queer identity pov too. you get what im saying? 

things that surprised me, like i didn’t hate them or particularly love them but i think they’re worthy of comment:
-

FISTING????

- TRULY a morally gray protagonist on like the darker side. like at the end of the book zhu

killed a child

to get what she wanted. i support nonbinary wrongs but whoa?
- esen, ouyang, and baoxiang ………….. lowkey welcome back robb stark theon greyjoy and jon snow

things i was not super a fan of:
- pacing was all sorts of fucked up! this is a lot of story to fit into 400 pages imo and you can very much see where the page count could have been much higher: in the military offensives and a lot of the politicking. the thing is that there’s a way to write about huge battles without actually writing a huge battle scene that also isn’t “the siege lasted two weeks, many lives were lost”, which is to write abt the battle from the pov of a character who’s not there…… which in this case is ma!! like not to be too asoiaf-pilled but ma could have easily played catelyn in that zhu would be warring, but like off-page, and ma is left to politic and react and such? Hope that also makes sense. writing this at 2am
- the pacing is such a big thing that im making it two bullet points. huge status-quo changing tide-turning events would happen every single chapter and they’d sometimes be explained with one sentence. I don’t even WANT them described i just wanted to take more time especially because i lost track of everyone’s character motivations around the middle to such a degree that i was like ok damn… i guess we’re doing this

ANOTHER banger by olivia atwater!! dude im just so happy to have discovered her books on a whim …. At first i was worried this wouldn’t live up to half a soul esp with a seemingly unconnected cast but im so so glad i was wrong :] only complaint? 245 pages is SHORT!! i would have loved to stick around for another 100-150 but i also appreciate an author who’s like “well im done with the tale, im not gonna stretch it out”. anyway brb recommending this to all my friends 

abt the hero… im putting a spoiler warning bc going in completely blind save for the blurb was an awesome AWESOME experience

dare i say juniper jubilee might lowkey be a historical romance hero of all time for me? i texted allie 30% of the way in like “Benedict is boring i hope she gets with the faerie instead” AND SHE DID!! let me tell you i was JUMPING FOR JOY — i was juniper jubilated if you will— when i realized im not hallucinating and that really is the direction we’re going. she literally let him hit because he’s whimsical. i love that guy and his joie de vivre and i think he’s PERFECT for effie and im glad she got a happy ending without having to compromise her class identity.

Octavia E. Butler I was not familiar with your game. I'm putting all your books on hold at the library as we speak

Takes a bit to get going, kind of melodramatic, and echoes a lot of the misogyny of the genre & era of novels its trying to emulate... but DAMN was I at the edge of my seat after the first like 33% !! 

library loan expired :(

This shit pisses me off so bad because I WAS THE TARGET AUDIENCE FOR THIS!! I WAS MEANT TO LIKE IT!! And yet the shitty boring writing dragged the whole thing down so much. Like I'll give Jones this it flew by for a 455 page book but thats because I was skimming huge chunks of battles that were poorly written and just did not advance anything. I thought most (not all!) of the characterization was especially weak because its like... there are 10 dogs right? why don't we get each of their backstory, maybe in the form of thematically relevant flashbacks? is it because Jones didn't WANT to develop 10 characters? like one-dimensional would be a compliment, some of these characters have a name a weapon and nothing else. can anyone tell me one thing each about tebbe and thorp and what makes the two of them different from each other? why is loveday their leader? why is he only becoming war-weary now? because

his wife and kids

died before the captain did so thats not why. and why does northampton get to talk like that to everyone? is he a 12 year old who just learned how to swear, learned he can get away with it, and stays up all night coming up with the most creative swears to sling at THE HEIR APPARENT the next day?

glimmer of hope in all of this: ROMFORD!! I kind of adore him, even with the otherwise horrible writing surrounding him. I honestly think the book should have been about him and him only. Mercenary who unwillingly becomes an accomplice in

a murder

and then to escape punishment becomes

a squire to the flop heir apparent, befriends him, kinda gets him addicted to opium, and then has like.... a weird little homoerotic moment with him in a time of weakness that the prince just ignores after?

basically i'm saying i ate the romford plot up but even that wasn't good enough to save it. im not reading the next one btw.... but i do want to know if romford and

kiss??

one last thing: im begging you to learn how to write women. actually im surprised by in his book on the plantagenets Jones treats the women with like a basic level of human respect. but im not sure why the ONLY woman in this whole ass novel is just there to get sexually assaulted, saved by loveday to show how kind and cool he is and how he doesn't fuck with rape (bare minimum but okay!), and then show up ever so often for loveday to be like "wow..... the woman from valognes...."

first book i read this year where i actively regretted reading it during and after. didn't stop because it was always *just* promising enough in the romford plot. im annoyed as hell and fuck

Deadline I had to read & review this by just kinda... flew by and away. Trust I will be finishing when the book is physically With Me again

Very cutie but quite literally nothing happens. That said the vibes are excellent