I started taking notes on each individual story then stopped since some of them are way too short for those types of notes. They all have the same pretense of what X was doing before school, so the notes got repetitive quite fast. 

This brought up a lot of world building questions for me: What happens if someone died before fillfilling their destiny etc. And the # of children you have is 100% based in how many you need to properly retell your story which isn't good for people's mental health in the long run lol. Also, should Raven and Apple have the have the same dad? If Ravens mom married apple's dad? Why are they the same age? That's a bit.... is Raven expected to marry Apple's dad? Or someone from the academy?

Anyway maybe it is time to stop thinking about this series and get onto the Monster High crossover. It's not that serious!

I'm glad I didn't read this one when I was younger. I had originally rage-quit the series after the TV show came out and "babied" it, making a lot impactful moments more tame etc. As much as I had loved the first two books, I couldn't bring myself to be caught buying this knowing more people would see the series over reading the books. This is not the end of the series by a long shot. There is a not in the back saying it is continuing other another author. I have no intention of continuing it, since I don't think it will live up to the president set by Hale. 

I went into this excited. I expected it to be the end of the series, which it is not, and happy that we were getting a book about Maddy. As the middle book in a series, writing about a side character works well. But not for an end which this is not, despite how much I wish it was. None of the interesting story bits were rapped up. The ending was a bit contrived however, I liked that it played into the Peter Pan thing, clapping for the fairies etc. It's fun even if it's not the best writing. And for a middle grade audience fun is good.

My main issue is the mismatch between expectations. In my heart this is the end of the series since its the end of what Hale wrote. But it functionality is not the end, and there are more books. 

I will read her other 2 companions and leave it at that. As much as I want to know what happens between the rebels and Royals I don't trust anyone outside Hale to write these books after the TV series.

Finding this hard as my library only has this in audio and I did not like the narrator at all. There were moments that the book had the same charm as the first one. My retention of the plot is not so good, however. 

This made me just as happy reading it as the first book did over 10 years ago. It's not quite as magical as the first one felt, which tends to be the way with series and time, but it is still lovely in the ways I remember. Though the stone speaking was starting to feel a bit overpowered, I'm glad it was more mystical than a functioning plot device. 

The book does feel like half of it happens off screen.

Mmmmm I have mixed feelings on this one. 

First of all, it's clear from the opener that Jenkins in on top of her game when it comes to writing. She frames the whole story within the context of a fire that's going to envelope the estate at the end of the book, bringing you hour by hour as we inch closer to the the time of the flaming blaze. 

However, when it comes to the actual story, I found it wasn't so engaging. Her writing keeps you reading, but I found I wasn't overly invested in the characters to keep picking this up after I put it down. They were easily forgettable as soon as I wasn't reading. This is interspersed with flashbacks to the character's parents, and later their younger selves. This was the highlight of the book, and where most of the real story is. It's over just under 50% through the book. The rest started to feel like padding. We started getting one off POVs from new character's who had no stake in the Riva's life and don't serve any purpose to the main story. I think there's something interesting happening here but I'm not 100% sure we got that story.

There's a lot of drama and I wasn't particularly invested in any of it. A worse writer would have had me put this on DNF.

One of the better books in the series so far. While I enjoyed the world building and learning about how other cultures integrate dragons into their society, the preview installments felt like we were slipping away from the series being about the Napolion Wars with a distinct lack of dragon fighting.

This book solved that! I also appreciate how Temerarire's expirence with different culters pushed him to become a very active role in the military and in the plot and how natural the progression seemed. I'm very excited to see where this series takes me next. 

This book is a power fantasy.

It's not about the plot or the characters or the worldbuilding, it's about doing all those things you wish you could do as unashamedly as possible. I might have enjoyed this book if I had realized that a bit earlier, however, I did not, and spent a lot of the book in conflict with it because I was expecting it to be more of a traditional fantasy/sci-fi.

The main character feels so out of place in the world. All of the "good" characters do. They feel like they've been plucked from our world and set down in a vaguely futuristic/historical fantasy setting, understanding things with our look on it and not something that could have been genuinely developed from living in that setting. As a power fantasy, that's the point of the book. The world's not fleshed out, but that's not the point of the book. There are things that feel like bad world-building, but they are there to play out the power fantasy. 

If you can suspend your disbelief enough to tag along for the ride, I can understand all the hype. It's well-written, there are so many impactful lines and phrases. If I had clued in a bit earlier that this was supposed to be a power fantasy, I think I would have enjoyed this more. Instead, I spent most of the book wondering why the systems are set up the way are because there is no way they could naturally end up that way because it's not sustainable. And then 75% of the way through, the reason was given and it was exactly what you would expect it to be in the context of the story, and that finally clued me into this being a power fantasy.

But if you're looking for a more traditional fantasy book with worldbuilding and complex political systems and the characters slowly working on sorting out what is going on around them in a natural way, this book is not for you.

Honestly only read this because it was one of the short stories the off-broadway musical See What I Wanna See was based on. And I have to say it's good! I had absolutely no idea what to expect other than I knew the testimonies would all be different. What I think is very interesting is that I have a different perspective on what happened after reading this than I did after seeing the show.