This is a much harder book that conspiracy of truths, both to read and I think to write. Aftermaths often are and for all the “fun” that Chant was having in book one, the way book two thinks about repercussions is really interesting and...crunchy, perhaps.
Where is culpability? How does that differ from responsibility? What are we called upon to do?
And also ugh I love Ylfing so much! And I loved how this story handled the intersection of grief and depression. I love when second books totally exceed their predecessors.

Another amazing entry into what may or may not be a series with a shockingly impressive number of stories that I loved. There were very few that weren’t my thing and even those I could appreciate.
Also, the retelling of myths is my JAM.

In some ways, this book felt very familiar from the larger world of reading and interpreting Tanakh. In other ways, it was very outside the norm. Discovering what felt interpretively acceptable and what was manifestly beyond the pale to me was fascinating.
Brains are weird, man.

Ugh, how does one even review Tolkien?
Like, he’s ridiculous and amazing and any glimpse into the way he thinks is a joy and also he’s just kind of ridiculous.
And also theology. I don’t know enough either theology or philology for this.

I liked how this book both nodded to and played with typical fantasy tropes. And the language was gorgeous as well. I really enjoyed it.
———
And I reread this in 2019, nearly 9 years later, having TOTALLY forgotten that I ever read it before. Still good. Nice rating, previous self.

I mean, how does one even rate The Silmarillion?
It feels too big for me to even respond to.
Like, I occasionally felt guilty listening to it while in the bathroom because it felt too...biblical?
And yet I’m so glad I finally found I way to approach this story that worked for me.

Uuuuuuugh. I read this book in a day, but also like in fits and starts because every time the characters did something I wanted to yell at them.
Which is right and proper in a romance novel.
We need to talk about pretty woman and the modern beauty and the beast or we can just enjoy this absolutely perfect queer retelling of 50 Shades of Grey as the only response to that book needed.
(I read the summary of 50 shades afterwards and I see a lot of the points Hall is making and I understand some of the “why would you do that” aspects that confused me at first. He was responding to some of EL James’ WTFery.)

This was transcendent and I regret nothing (as the king said).
It took less than a page between the time when I thought “oh, it’s a Jane eyre moment” and Arden starting mentioned Jane Eyre and, honestly, that is my everything. I love how referential this book is. I love how embedded within popular culture and literature this book is. It feels like an Easter egg half the time.
I love how much I just yelled at the main characters because their decisions made sense and trauma and emotions are real and also “don’t you all see you’re perfect for each other!”
There is, as they say, a lot to unpack when it comes to the beauty and the beast model of the romance novel. Both the model of one person as beast not only in the sense of power/frightening but also in the sense of cursed/needs-saving and how that plays out. And it’s a dangerous fantasy, like all fantasies when they enter reality. What fascinates me is the tools authors use to communicate “this one is safe” and “this one won’t actually hurt you”. Which requires attention and, in some ways, the BDSM frame of this book invites that conversation - you share safe because...boundaries, because reliability, because consent. But also the way that the curse that is the hallmark of beauty and the beast manifests instead as trauma. That’s messy. And this is fantasy.
Anyway, I feel validated in my choices not to read the second book in this series until I could reach it and this last one back to back.

So I’m not really a noir person (nothing like grad school to ruin a genre for you) and I’m definitely a mystery person and I always hunger for literary critiques of Harry Potter that are also their own books because Gailey is very obviously responding to the quaintness of the Potterverse and also totally doing her own thing by creating a version that is...more realistic is the wrong term, but is also very much true. There just isn’t enough high school in Harry Potter.
And so many bad decisions. So very many. Welcome to noir.

You ever read an introduction long after you should have because you, on the one hand, know the thing pretty well and, on the other hand, missed some obvious 101 stuff?
Yeah, this was a very useful book in that respect. Time to go through the footnotes and make my next reading list.