I'm very disappointed with this one. "Wish of the Wicked" was the first book I read last year and it was one of my favourite books from last year. After reading this, I still maintain that it should never have been made into a duology. 

The characters have nothing to so in this book. Cinderella and Mather spend the majority of this book Frozen in time, that's how bad it is. Every problem is created by magic and solved by more powerful magic.  This entire boom could have been solved by Hecate wishing for it to be over. Bari is the only one with anything to do at all, and it wasn't even interesting.

The worst part were the themes. I ATE UP the themes in the last book like it was chocolate. This theme was.... kissing makes it better!?! What happened to themes of revenge, identity loss, etc??? How did we go to romance saves the day??? If Paige wanted to solution to be love, it could have been the sisterly/familiar love between the Entente. Instead the last 200 or so pages of this book are the characters talking about kissing eachother and thinking about kissing eachother and talking/thinking about which other characters are kissing each other. 

The Rooks are even more stupid than I thought they were going to be. Totally unesseary and confusing. 

This one is my least favourite in the series so far.

As much as I am in awe of the ingenuity and thought that must have gone into this entire series, I struggle with it sometimes. This book in particular had me not interested in picking it up while I was reading it. The different dragon societies are interesting, don't get me wrong, but it's hard to get invested in the politics of a new country when we're being introduced to a bunch of new characters we will likely never see again.

Despite each book in this series being quite unique and having their own distinct features, the series is starting to feel formulaic. I'm very excited to go back to China in the bnext installment and perhaps start trying up loose ends and the series draws to a close. 

This one got me.

I've never fully felt the hype for this series. I could recognize that it's different, that the writing is good, that the ideas are there. But the books always feel too short and the characters are underdeveloped and there's too much telling and time jumps and never a true chance to get invested. Sometimes it feels like there's not enough time to do what needs to be done so you're getting beat over the head to make sure you get it. They felt more like the idea of a story than a story. 

This one hit different. 

Knowing how it ended after reading the first book, I was invested in the tragedy of it all, knowing this was going to go wrong at some point. The Goblin Market felt like the right size of world this length of novel and the stakes were personal, which fits better with the underdevelopment of the worlds and plot. All they need to do is serve Lundy's personal development and character arc. 

I hope the rest of the series carries on like this. Maybe it's finally figured out exactly what's it doing. 

I related a lot to Lindy which helped quite a bit. I could fully imagine how it felt to go to a world where the rules finally make sense and everything fits and everything's fair. And the poetic irony of Lindy trying to make the unfair world fair. 

I love this one so much, but please, don't pick it up unless you read the first book. I think that's part of what makes it work so well.

In a few years I'll have to revisit this series and read all four at the same time. I'm certain there are thongs I'm missing from the first 2 books as it's been almost a decade since I read them.

First of all, I was hooked in a way Lion Among Men did not, which was good. This book is still long and slow and it felt long and slow but it was not painful to read. 

Rain is a great protagonist and I loved her development. Her frienship with Dorothy and Tip were well done and a true highlight of the book. It's fun watching her come into herself and become more bold and whitty. She also hits any of the se story bears as Elphaba, but with one key difference: Maguire doesn't kill her off this time, now he's got a green girl he can write about. 

I'm not 100% certain this book needed to exist. I don't think we needed a sequel to Wicked. More than ever, this entire series feels like it's teasing you with the possibility that a better character *might* be alive and trying to dangle just enough Elphie in front if you to keep you reading and buying more books. I feel even more justified in these feeling now that we are getting "Elphie: A Wicked Childhood" when the original book covered Elphaba's childhood. 

My issues with this book stem from my feeling that it shouldn't really exist. A lot of interesting stuff is happening around Rain. Almost too much with the war and the politics and Rain is very removed from it, other than being Elphaba's  granddaughter. This book is more about her existing in a world as Elphaba's granddaughter than it is about her. Parts of the politics were done well, especially in the first part with Lady Glinda. She knew what she was doing. After that, everything started feeling long. The trial of Dorothy was too long, the end was too long. We were spending so much time on things happening around the characters while the characters had been off doing the things we read about. And I think a lot of that ties in to trying to make this Wicked 2.0 and make Rain the next Elphaba. Except she's not as good as Elphaba. Part of the tragedy of Wicked was knowing where the book was going and Elphaba's ultimate fate and all of this teasing about her presence cheapens the original book.

This review has spoilers for the first book in the series: Every Heart a Doorway.

I did not enjoy this one as much as the other two. I found it took me longer to read and I wasn't sucked into the magic the way I'd been with the previous two installments in the series. 

I don't like that this retconned Sumi's death. It's going to make it hard for things to be impactful later in the series if another character bites the dust. 

Also, the abundance of doors in this book makes it feel like the children at the school just aren't trying hard enough to go back or something because the cast did not struggle at all with going back and forth between worlds. Again, it makes the first book feel a bit pointless. If it's this easy, Jill didn't need to kill all those girls. 

I'm did not like Cora as the main POV either. She doesn't do much for the plot and has no stakes in it either as she came to the school after Sumi's death. I liked Nadya a lot more and I hope we get a book telling her tale. I like the concept of drowned girls to begin with, as I was a swim team kid, so I think I'd enjoy a prequel book for Cora too, but I don't think this was the right spot to make her the main POV.

It was nice to see Nancy again. I honestly don't get what's appealing about standing as a statue for the rest of your life but maybe that's the point. It's not my world, it wouldn't be me, but there's one for me that no one else would truly understand.

It's enjoyable and different. I always struggle a bit with graphic novels so I find them hard to review.

I don't have strong opinions either way on this one. I liked the second half better. Unless you're really intent on reading her entire body of work I think this one is okay to skip. 

You can see some of the beginnings of the author's style here, but it's definitely something she crafted and honed since this was released.

I was hoping this series would be a bit more independent from the movies. It's not so I'm not that interested in continuing it. 

The full 4 stars for this one!

It's different from its predecessor, which I was not expecting. I was expecting another school tale ending with someone going home. This, instead, is a backstory. I wouldn't say it's a traditional fantasy book. It does a lot more telling than showing, but that feels like a part of the book. Or a part of the narrative that is being built around the book.

Beyond curious to see where this series continues to go.

The writing is amazing. I am in love.

I'm not quite sure I can describe what it's like reading this book. It's too short but also the perfect length. I felt like it took the same amount of time as other books to get into it, which makes I hard because this book is less than 200 pages and it took almost 50 of them to get into it. This isn't an issue with a 300-page book, but is in a much shorter one.

I have a lot of questions still and I'm curious how this will work as a series since it seems like nancy's story is over. I'm excited to continue with this series and see where it goes. It's a short book so if you're interested in schools for magical-adjacent people. murders, or looking for something that might be out of your comfort zone, check it out.