I wanted to like the creative decision this sequel took in following a different heroine from the previous book. And I do like that Tella - being passionate and greedy for life - is often personified in the prose with descriptions related to sense of taste.
... But those were the book's only redeeming qualities, for me.
The introduction of the pantheon was jarring, I felt like I was reading a completely different fantasy series with the shift in magic system /and/ heroine.
The "twist" is not surprising at all. If anything it makes the first book more convoluted, and it makes this sequel not complex enough. Everything the heroine supposed could be true...turns out to be true.
With the mystery not really being a mystery, the story becomes...a romance? A personal awakening? Donatella learning to love is a beautiful message, but I don't feel it was as strong as Scarlett learning to be brave in the first book.
And that's sort of the whole problem in a nutshell: I like Scarlett, I like the magic system of Legend's enchanted circus, I like Scar trying to unravel the mystery of who are these performers and what is Legend's curse. I liked the first book, and I expected the sequel to /expand/ upon it, not deviate from it. Adding anything beyond the first book's conflict - Fates and Stars and Missing Bandit Mothers and Tella's love life - all feels... tacky. They're unnecessary rhinestones and feathers on an already stunning glittery dress. Legendary adds /a lot/ to the universe, without really adding anything to care about.

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!

Sad, beautiful and concise. I wish there were more. This almost feels like the Prologue to a longer book <3.

Absolutely adorable! It's charming and refreshing, how much a story can be told in pictures alone. Reminds me of the Journey trilogy. I wish I had a print copy, I would happily shell out the dollars for this beauty.

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.

An incredible gothic horror story about the stages of grief, the cycle of abuse, and women's rage! An ambitious tapestry, sometimes held together with all-too familiar threads (the ghost in the upstairs window, the ball rolling across the floor, a room being ripped apart in the blink of an eye, etc...). Whether the predictable horror beats distract you from enjoying the story as a whole is subjective; personally I was enthralled by all this book had to say. I ate it up! (Ha!)

My one regret is.... Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler... I'm not sure if we're meant to read any mental illness into Jane, or if we're meant to accept that this is a literal ghost story. I don't know if that's intentional on the author's part, or if I'm reading too much in between the lines that was never really intended. I wish I knew, in the end, if this book was literal or all psychological.

There were some nice echoes to the first book to bookend the sisters' journeys. But too much of the book was fluff and filler: umpteenth descriptions of how "hot" Legend is, disheveled Jacks is, Tella wears blue, Scar wears red - we get it. We get it. This is the final book in a trilogy, with an entire glossary of villains, magical items, and enchanted places, all of which are undervalued or outright /not included/ in this book, to make room for... Donatella dream-walking with hot guys. I found myself walking away from this book every 3-5 pages, because Donatella is insufferable. Scarlett's chapters were a wonderful story about a cautious, abused girl who nevertheless finds strength and power from learning to forgive and unfailing to love. Mwah, irresistible! I wish Donatella and Scarlett were different series in the same universe, because their love for each other is moving, but their stories smashed into a single book don't fit.

Also, strangely, the author seems to be aware that YA Fantasy - like, let's say, vampire romance - contains lots of messages about toxic masculinity and abuse (ex. An immortal boy is distant, cruel, condescending, self-harming, pick your flavor, but he is redeemed if A) he's hot and B) the irresistible mortal girl can change his behavior.) The /author/ is aware, and the /protagonists/ are aware, they waffle throughout the entire series between deluding themselves that they can change their love interest's behavior, or refusing their advances for their own well-being... But in the end, the girls fall helplessly for their bad boys anyway? Feels odd, that the author and heroes are all smart, and make healthy choices, but then backtrack.

This book is barely more than 200 pages, I thought it would be a breeze. But it was a slog to get through! I have some spleen I need to vent. Spoilers ahead.

My first gripe, is that this book suffers terribly from a toxic male gaze. The first chapter is about a man who cheats on his intended fiancee with a Faerie girl, and gets the Faerie pregnant. The remainder of the book follows their offspring - now a teenager - a boy named Tristran who won't take "No" for an answer. He has a crush on a girl (Victoria) who flat out tells him she's not interested, and never will be, but nevertheless he kidnaps /another/ girl (Yvaine) to somehow prove to Victoria that she owes him a kiss.

This book would have been incredible if all the men were edited out of it (sorry men! :'(). Without selfish Tristran and his selfish dad, or Tristran's selfish uncles who get killed off with no real impact conflict-wise on the story, we have remaining: The Witch Queen, Yvaine the fallen star,
Lady Una the missing princess of Stormhold, and Meggot, a healer aboard a skyship. In a nutshell: Lady Una is missing because she was captured by a witch, and is now cursed to be her servant - and sometimes a bird - until "the moon loses her daughter". The spiteful King of Stormhold knows that the right of succession passes to whomever of royal blood possesses the crown jewel, a topaz. So, he throws the topaz into the sky, where it knocks Yvaine (the moon's daughter) to earth. Yvaine wants to go home, but believes it's impossible; maybe with the help of a magic "bird" and a skyship, she could fly home! Meanwhile, The Witch Queen desires the fallen star; if she eats the heart of a star she'll stay young and powerful. Consolidate the witches into one witch and boom, done, nice tight story, two protagonists and an antagonist, fated (dare I say, star-crossed?) to cross paths in Faerie. You could even keep the romance subplot, if you wanted (lords know the book's strained definition of "romance" wherein Yvaine cusses about how much she hates Tristran, Tristran pines for another girl, and then in the end they kiss in the rain for no earned reason, needed reworking anyway); just have Yvaine and Una fall for each other. Or leave them platonic, either way, a story of female empowerment and the trials and stages and comraderie of womanhood, instead of the fairytale of a bunch of greedy little men who never learn their lessons!

Did I mention I had some feelings about this book?

My next gripe is the whole premise of "a fairytale for grownups". This book was like an octopus, trying to have one foot over here, another reaching over there, another stuck firmly over here... Most of the time, it wanted to be a random, whimsical story, in the footsteps of Frank L. Baum's Wizard of Oz series. But being /totally/ random is confusing, and - in the end - pointless. As a kid, it's fun to get lost in an adventure; that's how kids' pretend play usually goes! But as an adult, I've found, I don't just turn to fairytales for /pure/ escapism. I also turn to them for some kernel of truth: love triumphs over any adversity; or, life is hard and sometimes we suffer unfair losses and sacrifices, but we grow wiser and fuller for it; or, Good conquers Evil when Friendship and Reason prevail! An example of a book which is random, but offers wit and insight, would be "The Phantom Tollbooth". I expected more depth from "Stardust", since I know of what the genre is capable.

At other times, the book wanted to be a dark fantasy, with gratuitous descriptions of violence and sex. But these times were so few and far between, that they were jarring, and put me off reading. I love a dark fantasy ("Nevernight", for example), but jumping tones between Childishly Random and Gore Porn is no more appropriate or welcome than finding out your babysitter is a pedophile (I'm looking at you, Zombie Unicorn!).
There was a simple solution to the book's tonal whiplash: write more. See, the book yada yada's over sky-pirates (or sky-merchants?), goblin wars, battles (and later peace treaties) with giant eagles, a hot air balloon ride into Hell, the Unseelie Court, an entire coven of witches, talking trees who worship Pan, a mysterious magic man in a tophat, and a mysterious hairy merchant (who may or may not be a werewolf?) with a case full of magical items. Those are A LOT of loose ends. If this book were actually /about/ how Tristran and Yvaine faced off against a bunch of violent, magical enemies, and eventually brokered peace across the land of Faerie, then this book could be confidently both Random and Adult. But the book only /eludes/ to these encounters, never delving deeply, nor showing us the protagonists handling a conflict for themselves very often.
In a new edition prologue, Gaiman admits that he had planned Stardust to be the second of more books in a series. He wanted the first book to be entirely about Wall, and how it flirts with its neighbor, Faerie. And he wanted Tristran and Yvaine's many adventures to be the subject of /future/ books. All good ideas, but an idea and a published product are not the same thing. /This/ book needed more action, more conflict, more agency from its protagonists, more interaction with the world around them, more reasons to rely on each other (and therefore fall in love with each other). More. This book needed /more/.

If anyone is intrigued by the /ideas/ in this book, and wants to read a series which does /more/ with it, I highly recommend The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.