purplepenning's Reviews (1.72k)

A charming, funny, animal's eye tale of friendship, community, identity, derring do, occasional deep thoughts, and a touch of exuberant chaos. There are squirrels involved. You have to have a touch of chaos when squirrels are involved. 

It has a classic, timeless tone that's perfect for fans of Pax, the Endlings, The One and Only Ivan/ Bob / Ruby, and books by Kate DiCamillo.

The audiobook, read by Ethan Hawke, is excellent. 

A blend of hard science fiction, philosophy, and ethics that can be read as either hopepunk or horror — much like the great classic science fiction stories. 

Chambers is one of my favorite authors, but this is probably my least favorite of their writings. It has the well-written, quietly thoughtful characters and situations that I love, but there's also some sort of vaguely melancholy and threatening personal academic association with it that kept me from really connecting. Obviously, authors can't account for a reader's vague, personal associations, so that's entirely on me. 

If you've ever wondered what kind of adventure Milo from the Phantom Tollbooth and Pippi Longstocking could get into together if they were reinvented as middle schoolers tasked with saving an alt New Orleans drenched in magic expressed through jazz and blues and street art — and so much more, baby — then you're going to want to pick this one up. That's only half the plot and less than a drop of the inventive energy and Nola love here. You'll also find haunts and haints, living breathing songs, a magic compass, a couple zombies, a few talking animals, a robot, 4D graffiti, air trolleys, parallel/pocket universe, trans rep, Black culture, family core, big ideas about the layers of time and trauma and growing up, and a blend of urban fantasy, folklore, and superhero action.

It's not a book for everyone but it's an absolute ride for those willing to strap in and take it. I had no idea where we were going for much of the journey, and I'm sure I didn't completely understand the destination once we got there, but it was an experience that I'm glad I took the time for. I'm excited to see what this author writes next, even if I'm hoping it'll be slightly less frenetic. The audiobook is excellent — and helpful for those not familiar with the New Orleans names and dialect.

I haven't read any other books by Armentrout but picked this one up because it's the first in Tor's new romance imprint, Bramble. I read pretty widely, including fantasy and romance, and I can see why readers are drawn to "romantasy" in general and to Armentrout and this book in particular. I can also see why reviews here vary so much — amusingly, with the same things  being both *loved* by some and *hated* by others (the writing style, the dialogue, the main characters, the chemistry, the side characters, the steamy/spicy content, the world building, the ending). Readers bring a lot of previous experiences and expectation with them to their reading, but perhaps trope-heavy fantasy and romance taps into that most of all. A key phrase ("who hurt you?") or characteristic can tap right into an established set of feelings and expectations and can do a lot of heavy lifting as far as characterization goes. But that's a ramble for another time...

"Good and evil are real. They always have been. Yet the weight of the realm has always fallen on those in-between. Ones neither good nor bad." 

My experience with A Fall of Ruin and Wrath is that it's like the beginning of a Sarah J Maas story written by Katee Roberts. It leans into the theme of "morally gray" like it was the assignment and plays with the push-pull of "fated mates" and "star-crossed lovers" in a way that could get interesting if a lazy "chosen one" trope doesn't get in the way. 

Parts of it were kind of a mess for me — sometimes in ways I didn't mind and sometimes in ways that I did. The world seems like standard high fantasy at first but then it's also sort of post-apocalyptic and maybe less fae and more seraphs and demons? I don't need the world building to be completely nailed down in the first book in a series so I wasn't too fussed about this. If anything makes me pick up book two it'll be wanting to figure out this fantasy world and system. I mean I did not have

moral rot, climate disaster, and divine intervention

on my bingo card for what created this world, but I'm kind of here for it. I also didn't expect our vaguely angel-y immortal prince to come from

some Uruk Hai-style underground creation process

and I might be less here for that. Our female main character is gifted with insight, foresight, and intuition but hasn't learned to control her mouth or expressions and doesn't use her gifts for much of anything, including advancing the plot. There does seem to be some self-awareness about that eventually, but there's also a realization that she has some

intuitive, unearned ability to fight, which... sigh

. The story is drenched in public, partner-sharing sex and the premise of a powerful species of overlords and personal partner who "feeds on pleasure" but much of it feels like set dressing and lacks connection. And for all the sex positivity, casual queerness, and bisexuality rep, it still seems to be mostly / entirely women who are draped on laps, played with in public, sent to service visiting nobility, etc. in a system of class and power differential that makes it all pretty sexist and sketch.

I mean how is a baron expected to have a diplomatic meeting with a powerful visiting prince WITHOUT feeling up and fingering his trusted spy/companion/rescued orphan in front of said prince and then sending her over to him to finish so the diplomacy can be punctuated with her orgasm? It's okay — she has a *choice.*

Our male main character is entirely logical, taciturn, always gets what he wants, and is never wrong but finds himself

staked down and tortured in a barn

and wants the FMC with no logical reason for it and blabs a whole lot of seemingly sensitive and personal information to her almost immediately.

(Information about what can be done with all of his parts, yes, all of them — and his fluids — if they are harvested from him. I know there's been a lot of blood loss at this point and you're busy regrowing eyes and such, but,  sir — kept your secret semen info to yourself!)

Anyway... a lot of the character building felt muddled and a lot of the "steamy scenes" felt disconnected and kind of cringe — like they were included because auction winners won the right to have their personal fantasies written into the book. 

I've gone back and forth on the rating for this one, but I think I'll settle in at a 4. I *loved* the first book and though I didn't enjoy the second one nearly as much when I was reading it, I think of it with fondness and positivity now. I suspect it will be the same with this one. The world remains fascinating (I would definitely read more in this setting!), the characters are captivating, the Edwardian found family vibe is pretty perfect, and the whole theme of consent as it applies personally between partners and broadly in the system of magic and political power is clever and intriguing. The relationship dynamics and humor didn't really connect for me in books two and three, though I liked the individual characters well enough. Also, "levels of steaminess" is a completely subjective measure, but I think readers may want to know that this one follows the trajectory of book two and, on my scale at least, moves from "mildly steamy, mostly sweet and swoony romantic fantasy" in book one to "kinda spicy, unapologetically kinky romantic fantasy" in book three. There's a lot of fantasy story line to wrap up, so it doesn't become ALL about Hawthorne and Ross's relationship, but it's a significant part of the story.