Foz Meadows mentioned this series a while ago and it's one of those things that is both obviously a work of original fiction...and also fanfiction when you read fanfiction as a genre like mystery. Its approach to romance, to relationships, to world-building is reminiscent of fanfiction, which is amazing because it means fanfiction is developing into a genre that we can talk about and study.
Obviously I enjoyed it, but I wonder how it would read/feel to someone unfamiliar with the genre.

I think this book—well, series—is running up against my inherent dislike of the Bildungsroman as a genre. I’m really enjoying the existence of this kind of coming of age story being expanded beyond Huck Finn and Pip and I like it better when I don’t want to sock the main character in the jaw for 400 pages, but I feel like the Bildungsroman doesn’t have enough space for the world beyond the character. It’s not that stories about characters, especially those who don’t change the world, are boring...it’s that I have a hard time not wanting to know more about Binti in relation to her worlds.
I’m still looking forward to the third novella, mostly because I want to know more about the world. And because I need to know if Binti will be okay and emotionally healthy.
This is the real problem with the Bildungsroman as a genre: I can’t stop reading it because I’m too invested in the characters, but the experience of reading it is not as fun as other books.

This series!
Every time I think I have a handle on what it's doing, it goes off and does something else. It's a ridiculous text, and much of what it draws on in terms of style makes it turn into the kind of series you want to either throw at every one you know or just at a wall.
And it's incomplete because there's one book left and I want to know what happens next before I can decide how I feel about it.
There's so much that depends on how you read the honesty of the characters and narrators and editors: are they accurate in their assessments, are they true in their beliefs, and are they our narrators because Palmer agrees with them or wants to complicate their viewpoints. To what degree are the points that she glosses over a flaw in the narration or the text? Palmer is obviously not Mycroft Canner, but where, then, is she? That's the hardest part of this series for me.
With all that "blah!" it's also a ridiculously fascinating series doing all sorts of weird stuff that I am 100% here for as someone who deeply appreciates (yelling at) the 18th century.

It’s quite difficult to write a prequel and, for all that Pierce mostly succeeds in making the story about “how these people came to he who they are” rather than “what’s going to happen,” the absence of narrative tension is still felt.
We don’t get a chance to decide how we feel about these characters, because we already know them intimately. Baby Numair is actually the easiest since calling him Arram makes it easier not to associate him with Daine’s future teacher. The rest...to know a person’s fate is a heavy burden and it lets us judge them not for who they are, but for who they become.
And I am not, honestly, interested in the story of how Ozorne becomes the Emperor we know and hate. The story of how those in power turn their loss and grief into anger and evil is not that interesting. We know the seductive vices that let those teetering in the middle of the road fall. Damnit, I just want more stories of people in power choosing to be good!
Pierce is a bit formulaic at times, much of Numair’s early life feels like Beka’s and Kel’s, and even Daine’s. Troublesome magical animal, dealing with school-bullies, close encounters with confusing divinity, etc. There is something nice about variations on a theme and it’s easy to feel betrayed when an author does something unexpected. And overall I really liked a lot of it.
But I also want to feel a bit surprised once in a while.

If you have ever played D&D, please read this series. Kingfisher clearly understands the genre and the archetypes of the five man-band (well, three men, one woman, one gnole, and a little bit of dead demon) and, in a style I can almost call Pratchettian, does a send-up of the whole thing by taking it very seriously. The only reason I waited so long to make my husband read it was because he would not have been pleased if I'd left him with the cliffhanger at the end of book one.

Enemies to enemies who need to work together to friends to lovers is absolutely my thing and I am here for it. And for all that this book has plenty of disturbing elements in it (many of which get portrayed as such), the arc of coming into power is so enjoyably drawn, I have a hard time resisting it.

Look, I read this book the same day I finished the previous one and on Purim no less. You tell me what I think of it.
Good series, A+ ending, will probably read again. Thank you, Foz, for tweeting about this ages and ages ago.

This book was adorable and I enjoyed it very much.
Also, I find the imagining of the post-apocalyptic world that goes on without collapsing into devastation to be a really interesting new trend. Not sure what to do with it yet.

Okay, this book is a four in conceit, but a two in execution and while I usually try to rate for the attempt as well as the result, the author's idea of what he was doing differs enough from what I thought he ought to be doing that I'm keeping it at a two.
This idea had so much potential! And yet...
What this book actually needed was to be written by a fanfiction author. The author, at least in my opinion, doesn't really understand what it means to rewrite a work of fiction (well, two works). There has to be some reason for the rewriting, something MORE than just "wouldn't it be fascinating if these two stories were one?" What does this book have to say? Why did it need to exist?
My specific complaints are spoiler-tagged.

Which gets me to my biggest annoyance. Kessel, in the afterword, talks about trying to change as little as possible about the two books. WHY? That's the whole point of retelling a story! When you get into transformative works, the whole point is to alter the reader's view of the story. Fundamentally, you get NOTHING out of this story that a reasonably astute reader would not get out of reading Frankenstein. He doesn't change your mind about either Victor or the Creature, he doesn't alter the events in any meaningful fashion and then he has the gall to end by having Mary Bennet hang a lampshade on the fact that HE made no changes. That's not an argument, that's a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Any fanfiction author understands that the point of transformative works is to effect a transformation.
Come to think of it, one of the scholarly arguments made about Frankenstein is that it's the story of procreation without female influence. I grant that this is the story of toxic masculinity, but by introducing Mary Bennet into this story that's about the absence of women/the affective labor we associate with the feminine and then having nothing change, Kessel undermines one of the major premises of Shelley's original story.
I also hate the idea that tragedy and violence is inevitable and that the introduction of new factors can't change that (see ch. 3 of my dissertation). The message that the introduction of those who care into the narrative of toxic masculinity can't change it just bothers me--even if its a fiction, its a fiction we need.
I would forgive the whole Frankenstein thing...maybe...if Kessel had made this Mary's story. Which, first of all, would have meant having the narrative alter her rather than having her come into the narrative altered by experience and going through the narrative with little changing about her. This would have been a PERFECT opportunity to write about an unlikeable female character and give her a redemption arc but NO, she had to be likable already.
Incidentally, spending two pages making Mrs. Bennet have a flash of self-awareness is a waste of space. It's utterly out of character, goes nowhere, and--as far as I can tell--exists only because the author is fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea that Mrs. Bennet gets to stay silly and vain. Heaven forfend everyone not meet a specific standard of womanhood. It was just so obviously out of place in the narrative that I have a hard time pinning it on anything other than the author's discomfort with Mrs. Bennet.
Which gets back to Mary as a figure. She begins as a kind of Anne Elliott from Persuasion and...stays one? She doesn't change or evolve or become a better person, which is ridiculous because you could have totally done just that! It's such a waste.
On reflection, it's even worse because this absolutely COULD have been the story of fridging Victor Frankenstein to save Mary Bennet. He practically dies on an ice floe! Like it could not be better if you'd designed it. Their tragedy becomes the fulcrum on which her redemption turns and then you get an unlikeable woman AND a story with a point.
And finally, this book doesn't stop to think about what it inherits from its 19th century forebears. There is no reason that a book written in 2018 should kill off a character one day after she admits to having had sex. I find the idea of having Kitty Bennet become the bride of Frankenstein frankly hilarious and it could have gone so well. But he basically killed her for getting laid and aren't we done with that by now? Seriously, didn't that occur to anyone? It's also not justified by the plot.
I did like that the 2010s seems to be the decade of "make Henry Clerval gay," although since he also dies, I'm not sure. That's it, next book is #CreatureClerval.

I have other minor quibbles, which is that very few people can do free indirect discourse like Austen can and, when you can't it shows. I prefer it when authors don't try. There's a particular tenor to her work that is about showing through telling...Austen tells us what her characters emotions and thoughts are, but rarely does the work of interpreting them for us and most contemporary authors can't resist.
And I realize this is arbitrary, but I much prefer when authors just hand wave the science in Frankenstein rather than try to make it make sense and give Frankenstein knowledge of things 200 years ahead of his time. So that annoyed me.
Also, Victor Frankenstein remains the worst and I have no idea why he needed to be a POV character in this book. Just because he was in the original doesn't justify it here.
The book this could have been is so much better than the book that was.

This book is really hard to categorize, which is what happens when you have a mash-up anthology like this.
And, once again, Navah and Dominik did an amazing job of collecting stories. I think I appreciated all of them, although my favorites--either from theme, handling, or ugly-crying--were probably Seanan McGuire's, Alyssa Wong's, and Maria Dahvana Headley's.