Game of Thrones and Goblet of Fire adopted an African folktale, and the result is this flawless book! I had no idea how much my heart was aching for this story until I read it! I cry for my younger self, that she didn't have this book to read yet. It is everything I ever wanted: an enchanting, inclusive and deft tale of political intrigue, family drama, obstacles of racism/sexism/religious persecution/insert your -ism here, and overcoming one's own emotional demons. Strong female leads, vulnerable male leads, a story that twists and turns every time you think you have the answer, and the last 40 pages alone left me breathless. My only regret is that I have to wait another 8 months for the second book! I cannot wait for more from Roseanne A. Brown; the world desperately needed this author. Thank you for this book, thank you for being a literary superhero!

For 400 pages this book had me second guessing why on Earth I was reading it, until, at last, it snapped to attention in the last 20. Spoilers ahead.

For starters, anyone whose jaw hit the floor with the cliffhanger ending of Nevernight, is going to be severely disappointed when Mia does NOTHING to unravel that mystery. Absolutely zero time spent in this book pursuing the history of the moon, and what it might mean for darkin or other magical beings!

Instead, I felt like we were given /another/ origin story. If Nevernight was Hogwarts for Assassins, then Godsgrave is some combination of Hunger Games and the classic slave-to-rebel story. 300 something pages of Mia training at weaponry and poison-detection, all over again. Almost 400 pages of Mia making friends despite mental admonishments that she shouldn't get attached to people.

The author's artistry on the page, the echoes, the metaphors - they're largely missing from this book. This book reads more like a Michael Bay action movie: it's crude, it's gratuitous, and it acts like tripling the amount of vomit, piss, guts, and other bodily expulsions from the last book is somehow gloriously entertaining, the entire reason we're here... FYI, it's not; some of us actually cared about the characters and the plot... This book was a slog to get through simply because of how gross it was.

Yes, there are mega twists at the end which make me feel better about some things in hindsight... And also make me feel cheated! Once again, an "assassin" spends a lot of time trying to NOT kill people. And the final twist is just plain campy. After the lack of explanation for the moon twist, I don't expect a great explanation is going to be provided for the shadow-tentacle-man twist.

All in all, if you're looking for a tale of bloody revenge... you got it. But if, like me, you're looking for a magical world filled with depth, lore, dangerous surprises, and a strong heroine who undergoes some kind of character growth... this sequel might disappoint you. I won't be able to say for sure until I've finished the trilogy, but I'm getting strong "Catching Fire is just Hunger Games all over again but with a twist ending" vibes. Godsgrave feels largely skipable. Time will tell.

Imagine watching "How to Train Your Dragon", but randomly, without warning, the movie cuts to some of the most controversial moments in Game of Thrones. This book ought to have come with a trigger warning. I almost chalked it up as a Did Not Finish after page 130, but I checked the Goodreads ratings to see if I should give the book a chance to redeem itself... I read to the end, but I feel like the odd reviewer out; this book failed on many levels with me.

For starters, the Switching Point of View Characters mechanic did not work in this book. Not to name drop, but when another famous dragon enthusiast, GRR Martin, switched perspectives, it was always to propel the action and the timeline forward. But this book will give the exact same scene, with all five protagonists present, and describe every gesture and dialogue, no surprises. Or worse, will have all five protagonists undergo the exact same activity, with the same motivation, but in /separate/ chapters, so you feel as if you're reading the same scene five times over. There is nothing gained by naming the chapter after one of the characters in the scene. And sometimes two chapters for the same character are back to back, leaving me wondering if the author even knows what a chapter is at all. If you're not going to switch perspectives, why not simply have a page break? It feels as though the book would have benefitted greatly from scrapping the mechanic, and simply swapping perspectives within a single chapter, each chapter being a scene.

Another nitpicky negative, this book barely "dragons" before page 300. The major selling point is supposed to be the dragons. It has "Dragons" in the title. But the dragons are more often treated like horses, just tethered and left behind while the humans have their misadventures. Yes, okay, I think there is supposed to be a metaphor somewhere in how each of the competitors behaves a bit like a dragon(?). But I do not feel the cast of heroes lives up to the promise in the title, because 3/5 of them do not want to be a part of this tournament. They try to flee, or they mope and resign themselves to losing/dying; they allow the plot to simply happen around them/to them. They are rather boring to read about. The tournament may push them from obstacle to obstacle, but the majority of characters don't really take agency until somewhere past page 350. That's a long time to wait for a cast to DO something, and to hope that the audience is enthralled simply because "Ooo, dragons!"

But my big concern is the tonal whiplash of this book. Spoilers and triggers ahead. Sometimes this book is for children, and it joyfully describes a dragon race resulting in a firebreathing tussle which totally doesn't burn the dragonriders to a crisp, aren't cartoon physics fun. And then suddenly, this book is for adults of a particular constitution, describing the public vivisection of a little girl, or a boy whose eyes melted, or a young woman who was raped by her liege lord. These more mature moments appear without lead-in, and without respect. These scenes are thrown in like paragraphs of characterization: She had red hair, grey eyes, and feared having molten lead dribbled into her eye sockets. There is no sense that this book is trying to create a macabre atmosphere, or carry a central theme about suffering and redemption, or teach its target audience about how to endure through trauma - nope, these scenes simply...are. They /are/ there.
And I can't even rightly say that the characters are motivated by their trauma, because their motivations and characterization change sentence to sentence! In one scene, a girl will be both meek and brazenly spiteful. Or another character will worship structure and lawfulness, and then burn down a town. The list is long, and easily visible in my highlights, bottom line being that even after 400+ pages, I'm not sure I really /know/ these characters.

Which brings me, I think, to my final problem with this book: Its inspirations were obvious, but it does not live up to its predecessors. There were obvious allusions to Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Eragon, How to Train Your Dragon, etc... So many, that it feels like the author really enjoys dragons, and wanted to have a fantasy book... but got burnt out writing one. Nostalgia doesn't make a story. Everything feels unpolished, and just reminds me that I could be reading something better.

The characters, setting, and magical system of this world are captivating and breathtaking. There is a sense that it's Not Quite Earth, everything feels familiar but a little off. Definitely some Avatar/Legend of Korra vibes, which is GREAT, I'm a huge fan of that universe.
However, the story centers heavily around a prophecy, which is a trope, it's been done and overdone. Plus side: The existence of prophecies in this universe is linked to prophets and an ancient, still popular, religion, which is very relatable! And the heroes come to the conclusion that prophecy or no prophecy, they're going to follow their hearts. Minus side: There is a HUGE chunk in the middle of the book where everybody is trying to follow the prophecy verbatim, and therefore nobody has any agency in their actions. All that great characterization and setting flies out the window as people do things they wouldn't ordinarily do to adhere to some mystic mumbo-jumbo (which is easy to misinterpret in the first place!).
I'm glad I stuck with the book until the end, and am excited to see how the series continues. But fair warning about that spot in the middle you have to trudge through to get back to the good stuff.

This book is fantastic, and is so much better when you don't know what you're getting into. V.E. Schwab reveals the bigger picture one little clue at a time, somehow managing to make a diverse cast of morally suspect misfits feel compelling, like a brilliant mashup between Dexter, Lost, and Cowboy Bebop. No spoilers from me; read this book!!!

This book is criminally boring. It reads as though the biographer only had access to Jim Henson's secretary's day planner, and gives the driest rundown of what time Jim's flights were or when he went out to dinner... This man was a creative and philosophical legend. Where are the sketches and storyboards?! Where are the quotes from his personal journal? Where are the /color/ photographs? Why are there no interviews with any of the many, many, MANY celebrities who crossed his path? This book did Jim Henson a disservice by not being more visual, more colorful and elaborate, more /fun/.

And, if anything, this book /lowered/ my opinion of Jim Henson. Despite the author's reassurances that Jim Henson was morally upstanding, I found, the more I learned about him, the more Jim seemed to morph: another predator on the #MeToo list; an arrogant man who wouldn't hear criticism, especially from women, and who would spitefully fight his critics by writing them letters; a man who let fame go to his head and overspent frivolously; a man whose "creativity" was limited by whatever life hang-up he was going through at the time (Jim wants to break into movies, Kermit makes a movie. Jim lives in Manhattan, The Muppets take Manhattan, etc.). I cannot believe that this book made me fall /out/ of love with Jim Henson.

This book could have been a much-needed, and appreciated, queer fairytale. Instead, it took two steps backwards for each step forward. Spoilers below.

1) Pro - A non-binary hero stumbles into a journey of redemption, self-discovery and true love.
Con - Said character is introduced as a trans person, who uses their assumed identity to mislead and harm their love interest. The world did not need more Trans People Are Secretly Trying To Hurt You characters in fiction.

2) Pro - A resilient and cynical black heroine - whom society has cast down - learns to trust in herself and others, and unlocks a power and happiness she hitherto thought inaccessible to her.
Con - A black person is society's punching bag, so she turns to a life of crime. We didn't need more All Black People Are Criminals tropes in fiction.

3) Pro - A heroine living a confused, harried life, comes to realize that she is more than what society expects her to be, and she has access to literal magic when she is true to herself.
Con - Magical Black/Asian Girl trope. Too often in fiction, people of color or islanders get romanticized as having access to mystical wisdom/magical powers. Romanticizing Otherness widens the gulf of understanding between races and contributes to racism. Would have been nice if either heroine were powerful because of their personality traits (kindness, courage, etc.), or because of their chemistry together, rather than witchcraft.

4) Pro - A queer fairytale has two heroines explore genderized roles - male and female - in order to fit into society, before rejecting society entirely and becoming something completely, profoundly new, and Right for them.
Con - Spoiler: They become fish. Well, they become mermaids, but mermaids in this universe are very fishy, having wide-set eyes and gills on their cheeks. Again, we have a widening chasm instead of a bridge, representing queer people as Other, even Non-Human.

Getting off my social justice soapbox, this book's technical writing was also problematic and immature. The author repeated themselves, seemingly for emphasis, but often unnecessarily/to little effect. The switching point-of-view characters didn't work for me, there was no suspense left to the book, and also I was confused as to whether the author wanted us to sympathize with the viewpoint character or not. There were plotholes (like why blow up a ship when A) You're on it, and B) You're supposed to be conducting a stealthy rescue mission?). The characters largely don't have character arcs: Evelyn is already kind and unconventional, Flora is already aware of their gender fluidity and /moral/ fluidity, Rake knows he is silent and complicit and never pays for it, Genevieve is a loyalist who remains loyal despite learning of her government's many corruptions... The only measurable growth is minor: Flora, who knows she is comfortable as Florian... admits that she is comfortable as Flora or Florian. Which is great and all /for Flora/, but does nothing for the people she's murdered.

All in all, I felt this book was trying to do something profound, but failing in its task. I vacillated between being angry and being bored.

An absolutely stunning sequel. The back cover spoiled for me that there would be new protagonists, and I thought the shift wouldn't live up to the rivalry between Eli and Victor in the first book. Boy, was I wrong! The new additions are a welcome, strong, deliciously scary team. "He'll hath no fury like a woman scorned."
The mechanic V.E. Schwab uses, of counting down to the moment when all the characters collide, is beautifully done. My heart was in my throat the whole book!

I am grading this book harshly because I had been expecting something either supernatural, or a little more manic-pixie-dream-boy/quirky road trip, and instead discovered that this book is New Americana. I hate Americana. I don't see the romance in a truck, a dog, a beer, a diner, the open road and the even more open sky. I hate Steinbeck and Hemingway and Salinger, and talking about minutiae as if it means the world, and watching a protagonist struggle with their /thoughts/ for 400 pages before abruptly ending. Fair warning, I'm a biased critic on this one. Spoilers ahead:

First off, props where props are due, I appreciated what this book was /trying/ to do. I like that this generation's coming-of-age-in-America story is about being a descendant of immigrants and being queer, and not really understanding one's own body, or place in the world, or how to find "normal"/feel secure. And I appreciated the motif of everyone carries a private war or storm around inside themselves, and is forever hurting and healing and becoming someone new.

I did /not/ appreciate the mechanics Sáenz used to sell these themes. For a narrator who's not keen on talking, this book is surprisingly dialogue heavy, but the dialogue is awkward and either pithy or self-righteous. I didn't believe in Dante or Aristotle as characters, either. So they're not jocks, fine. So, they like to write or draw, makes sense. Ari doesn't like TV? Doubtful. Dante spends whole hours reading /poetry/ to Ari, or sketching him, or writing him snail mail asking if he enjoys masturbating??? No boy ever - be they artistic, queer, shy, whatever - acts like this at 15-17 years old. It was too much to believe.

And the book itself didn't seem to believe that this was a queer love story. Ari insists until the very last page of the book that he's "just friends" with Dante. There are enough clues between the lines that one /could/ read this as a love story. But the book could have told just as important a message about a platonic relationship between a queer teen and a straight teen: Sometimes you desperately love someone even if it's not sexual; Sometimes the person you're crushing on doesn't feel the same way back and that can make or break a friendship; Sometimes someone we love comes into our lives for only a short while and changes us profoundly, but we go our separate ways; Sometimes you need an ally more than you need a boyfriend, etc. I feel like most My Fair Lady fans did when the play was adapted to film: Yes, you COULD read a romance between Higgins and Eliza, but the story is stronger when it's about a lop-sided relationship which Eliza /outgrows/ and /leaves behind/.

And as much as I love queer representation, I found Dante to be toxic. Red flags:
1) Dante bathes Ari, insisting he has consent from Ari's mom, and that it won't be weird. He doesn't exactly /ask/ Ari.
2) Dante repeatedly pushes his desire to go swimming with Ari, even when Ari is sick, recovering from injuries, or the weather is bad. He doesn't consider Ari's condition, only how good it would make /him/ feel to be swimming (touching, wet and half-naked) together.
3) Dante keeps score of how many letters he writes to Ari, versus how many he receives, and guilts Ari for being less intimate/a bad friend.
4) Dante asks Ari for embarrassing, private details, like, "How many times a day do you masturbate, and what do you think about?"
5) Ari tells Dante he's not into boys, and Dante is not to try and kiss him. Dante ignores this boundary, and insists that they should kiss. Ari REPEATEDLY SAYS NO, and Dante ignores that lack of consent, kissing him anyway.
6) Dante and Ari get caught in the rain, in the desert. Without preamble, Dante strips naked in front of Ari.
7) Dante substitutes a different boy, Daniel, for Ari, and /tells/ Ari that he's using Daniel to imagine being with Ari.
8) Dante attempts to make Ari jealous by dating Daniel. He then gets angry when he, seemingly, was unsuccessful, and Ari didn't follow them to a party to prove any hidden feelings for Dante.
9) Dante ends their friendship because Ari won't be in a relationship with him.
Many of these moments are meant to be cute, or are meant to illustrate that these boys belong together (Some boys belong to the summer sun, others to the storm. These boys are always wet. You get it? Metaphors!). But I found it disturbing how many times Dante tries to manipulate Ari, instead of being a good friend/partner in his own right. I know another one of the themes in this book is how we don't always make the right decisions, especially when we're being ruled by our feelings, and I suppose I should cut Dante some slack for being a teenager in love? But "Boys Will Be Boys" is a toxic message, one the current generation has desperately sought to combat; you shouldn't forgive grooming or abuse just because a boy was horny. And gay characters in fiction being conniving is an old, gross stereotype that recent fiction has ALSO striven to correct. Positive representation is important. How we write queer characters is important. Believe it or not, dear readers, audiences are impressionable! Shock! A book has the ability to inspire compassion, or inspire fear... I think Dante is poor queer representation, and I think he feeds some people's fears that gay people are predators. I think the reveal that Bernardo murdered a transvestite double underscores that fear. I think, without meaning to, this book actually reinforced the arguments of people who would decry queer folk.

Circling all the way back to the beginning: The title. Did this book deliver on its promise?... Kind of? What "secrets" did Aristotle and Dante really discover? That some boys like kissing boys? That people, in general, have more going on inside than they share outside? That dogs are perpetually happy, and humans are not? I'm not sure the "secrets" really counted as secrets, and the self-discoveries the protagonists make were kind of no-brainers. The biggest one of all being when Ari's parents have to /tell/ him he's in love with Dante; Ari doesn't figure that secret out for himself. I found Ari's philosophical musings to be immature - well-written for a teen voice, certainly, but underwhelming to an adult audience. I caught myself rolling my eyes or yelling at the book, unimpressed that Ari took so long to discover some things, or considered basic common sense to be "secrets" at all.

Someone will enjoy this book. Just not me :/.

A beautifully written book, no question. I found myself wishing aspects of it were real: I wanted to go to Robbie's rendition of Midsummer, I wanted to play in the art exhibit...

But about midway, this book just wasn't /doing/ enough for me. All the time in the world, and Addie pines in France for almost two centuries, revisiting her home at least four times, and every time swearing she's here "for closure"? And then she finally gets a taste of a real relationship...and she spends most of it ordering food. Just food! Beer, coffee, gyros, kebabs, croissants - my gods. Maybe it was realistic, but it was also sad, how much our tiny lives revolve around food. I got bored, and then I got angry that Addie wasn't /doing/ more with her time. Is the book /supposed/ to make the reader feel like Luc? Because I don't think so, I think we're supposed to root for Addie... I don't. I found her snobby, and unimaginative, and /she's/ the muse for so many people she passes?!
The meta commentary about writing was the nail in the coffin for me, though. The ending was enough to knock off a star, in my eyes :/. Henry's whole purpose... Is to never have a self, just to prop up Addie? His whole conflict was about feeling purposeless! Way to do Henry dirty.