No, this was good. In its genre, it’s definitely better than some, and I liked Niki—I had sympathy for her—but I wanted more for her in the long-run, and she didn’t seem to want more for herself, and that was disappointing. As these stories go, I could see where this one was headed. It’s one we’ve heard before, so there was no shocking reveal by the time we got around to the shocking reveal. 2+2=4 and all that. But the storytelling was enjoyable. If you love stories set in a collapsing Europe during WWII with international (and impossible) love tangles, read The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje or any of Kate Quinn’s novels first, and then read this—or the other way around if you prefer saving the best for last.

Started out on a high note of adventure, but the story lost weight and meaning as it progressed… The crimes committed were without sense as the reason behind them was vague, and though meant to be magical, the logic pinning it to realism made the magic almost too nonsensical to even allow a smudge of belief. Like, anyone could have just drawn another map and voilà. Buuuuut… even though the relationships were a stretch to believe, and the plot a bit patchy, the concept was delightfully unique and it was certainly a novel I’ll remember for that.

Well-researched and superbly penned!! This historical investigation of one ship against a world of opposition is an adventurous investigation that relates the historical fact with extraordinary feeling, transmitting all the tension imaginable as ships chased and dodged one another on eerie fog-heavy, shark-infested seas, during a time when domineering nations drew invisible lines in the earth and filled stolen lands with stolen lives. 

 

Rooks paints the truth of the drastic inhumane conditions on slave-ships with great respect for those who suffered, though she does not shy away from details; she manages to celebrate the small victories amid an onslaught avalanche of unthinkable injustices; she brings to light an unbiased, though engaging look at the history of this daring sole campaigner and its impossible assignment on the deadly seas. 

 

A worthwhile lesson for any lover of British Naval history, but probably one of the most important little ships in the history of the British Navy because of its most holy mission. 

A science-physics-philosophy discourse presented in reams of exhausting dialogue and presuming to hold up the skeleton of this pseudo-novel. Or not. It was super interesting. Or wholly boring. Or maybe both, or neither. Academic and heady, or practical and socially-minded, or possibly just a collection of words, and everything is paradoxical, nothing is as it seems, even when it’s not as it doesn’t seem… —and so goes the narrative in this largely uneventful piece. At least it’s true to its title. 

 

The plot is still scraping itself together, and the characters, while they’re meant to be the core of this body of work, struggle though this one as a single confused, self-absorbed, at times nihilistic entity, lacking diversity of imagination, though engorged with the jargon and minutiae of stuffy puffed up academics in varied two-dimensional shapes on a diversified canvas. 

 

It sounds smart, sure. And there are bits of discourse that are certainly worthy analogies to the current state of world affairs (Belen’s sole embittered chapter highlights this beautifully—it’s a stand-alone, though worth reading on its own), but the actual story has no meat, no spine, no point, other than to act as a stack of soapboxes. 

 

We get more of Reina here, less of Parisa (shame, as this girl is an entertaining emotional train wreck), but what’s in Reina’s head cannot be all that appealing to even the basest of readers. How did someone so antisocial and expressively dull catch anyone’s attention, let alone this so-called elite society? And yet, dang, she grows on you… 

 

It reads implausible. Well, the whole thing is based on magic, but there’s nary a glimmer in 400 pages… which would be tolerable if there was a solid plot to attach oneself to and be carried along—but that too is sparse, and even this would not be such a deterrent if the characters were compelling, but…well, you get the idea. Not much happens in this novel, though it’s much more than what happens in the first (still scratching my head at that one; and perhaps one wonders ‘why delve into the second?’—but of course, I always hold out hope…Yes; I’ll read the third also.) 

 

This is better than the first by a leap, though struggling to be a ‘novel’ in sense of having a plot and a core idea (certain people are painted as threats to humanity, but we’re never sure what these threats are; and there are disastrous capabilities that certain (all) characters possess, and for which they ‘need to die’ but we never get to know the extent of these magic talents—well, we’re given the hints that they might have to do with being earth-sized human atomic bombs, or the accidental mind-readers of 8 billions, hosts to a plethora of pending disasters, but their intent is quite obscure and the ideas are left as vague possibilities never materialising). There’s no real purpose to the novel, but to maybe save the world(?) or at least talk about saving /destroying the world (ad nauseam), but the setting has taken shape more concretely, at least, and is possibly the only concrete thing one might grasp within these pages…. 

 

It’s really difficult to say whether I liked this or not. Possibly. Maybe. Who knows…? 

A multilayered romp through scrolls and bedsheets, this novel was like watching a reality tv kind of soapy drama full of twisted trysts between a group of self-centred first year philosophy students who have been locked up in an estate with the only instruction being not to let anyone else in, and the mystery that only five of the six will outlast the period of ‘volunteer’ seclusion. One will be eliminated. (Gosh, this premise sounds so good…and then…) 

 

The characters don’t have much individual depth or draw any sympathy until about 70% into the novel when they’re faced with a life-altering realisation that breaks them into cracked untrustworthy factions and unstable partnerships. 

 

Parisa is sadly despicable, but we pity her. Libby is a touch likeable, and we keep hearing of all her mystical power but never see any of it (would have been nice to just see it once maybe in 550 pages). Nico has a magic trick he also never uses in the whole book. Calum’s superpower is being a nasty person despite supposedly being the most empathetic among the group. Tristan is just not smart and for the entire year has no idea what he’s doing, but just keeps slogging along like a forlorn and jittery martyr.  

 

But from the start we all know who the target will be, as it’s the only thing that makes sense, which in turn makes us feel it should be someone else, just to twist the logic further… 

 

There are some secondary characters to the main six: Ezra, Dalton, Atlas himself—and random mermaids, or mermaid-satyrs to be exact. Not sure how that works, but they have all their plumbing in tact, or so we’ve been adequately assured (cos that was a necessary tidbit of info). 

 

I have no idea what in the world the point to this was except to wax philosophical/pseudo-scientifically about time and space and every relative theory ever contemplated, about sex and attraction and the power of seduction, and  jammed up with a lot of pretentious musings about the existential mysteries of the universe with no real scrutiny or investigation going on anywhere. 

 

Not much magic anywhere either, despite the promise of magic for survival in the premise. Nothing but hands on walls and thinking things into power, but zero show of said power. A whole year passes and all they’ve done is read (oh, we don’t get a glimpse of those pages either), and have lots of sex with each other, and gaze at theories and concepts, and discuss and fret over who to eliminate and how not to be eliminated. 

 

See? ‘Big Brother’ in a Uni Dorm. 

 

Reina was slightly more interesting than the rest of the other narcissists. She didn’t get enough time on the page, though, and maybe if she did, we wouldn’t like her either. 

 

A whole year went by on these pages…and it felt like all they did was talk the joy out of life and explore each others’ bodies in the most selfish manner, and then talk about how they were all using each other for their own means and then contemplating who they’d eliminate. 

 

 

And then it ends teetering on a cliff— 

An unhurried journey stretching across generations, spanning a century, showing the strength of human spirit to overcome great turmoil. This is a world-weary love story. It reflects a passion for the near missable details of art and aroma life offers if we’d stop to notice; it furrows the deeper trench love digs across continents, in families, and between a myriad people from varying cultural barracks. And in the midst of all these strained and broken relationships, two individuals ebb and flow with the tides of religious and political division.

This is an art lesson, a chemistry and history lesson, a political analysis, a religious critique. It is several love stories. It is one love story. It is a work of art. It is a love letter for a dispossessed homeland. It is a love letter to the new places and people that have become home.

It was beautiful…

I loved this line:

‘Oh Happy Paper, how I envy your lot. We shall be here, but you will go see India.’

Great characterisation and a well-crafted plot. I’m not a fan of Maas’ Faery series storyline, but since I’ve been reading this DC Icon series, hers was in the line-up. Here, Maas shines with all the talent she possesses in bringing characters to life (and none of the irritating storylines that detract from good writing).

Ivy and Harley are both superb side kicks but Selena shines complex and compassionate beneath her hardened shell. She’s a criminal, but she’s justified and our hope for her only increases as we venture deeper into this overgrown garden of intrigue. 

Maas has brought out all the complex greys in Selena’s character and made her shimmer like a neon rainbow. Batwing is a keeper, too.

A complex layered plot with some unexpected reveals that piece together all the gaps. A satisfying conclusion that leaves the door cracked for future episodes. Quickly makes you hope it’s headed to become BBC/ITVs next great detective series.

Cat is awful and super all at once, and is surrounded by a fixed cast of loveable personalities (including all their icky bits), and a fistful of secondary characters that keep you guessing.

These are surprisingly slow reads for me in light of the general easy pace of the reading, and yet, they’re savoury slow, long cook kind of pot-simmering characters who linger between the parts when they aren’t taking centre stage, who develop in the shadows of the bits we don’t get to read, and there’s a simplicity and a profundity about it that begs me wonder how Bardugo makes that happen.

Nina is hands-down my favourite character with her sharp edged polyglot whip of a tongue, fast hands, and steady heart; there is so much more beyond the beginning and end of this story that we have yet to explore with Nina. I feel it. And if Leigh Bardugo doesn’t write it, it’ll probably happen in my dormant imagination anyway. Adventure and love and miracles shall abound…

Inej gets what we truly want for her, no mourners regrets but time lost in the in-between.

Full of dark addictions, insecurities, injustices, and revenge, every character uses their time to grapple with the impossibility of their own fight, and their irreplaceable role in the great fight for freedom. It has all the twists and turns of a wholly unpredictable plot (though we know ultimately where this is going. ish.) but the apprehension whispers that just around the corner another genius plan is going to fall off a spire and go splat on the dirty streets of The Barrel.

You can’t just pick this up and read it in one go, you really have to let it sit, set a little time between the chapters, tuck the characters into your day and see where they end up, what they do in the time they’re not speaking from the page—they seem designed for a sort of extended life… and then in the end, which feels more like a beginning, as sailing ships line the harbours readying for departure on The True Sea, and as the soul of a rising Grisha community can be heard again, and a new merchant attitude in Ketterdam spreads, and with unexplored Shu and Fjerda and Zemeni and Kaelish voices yet to be heard, the bones of this world lift and fling like sparkling dust into the winds of imagination…

Where next? There’s so much more yet to be explored. Because, after all, it’s the world of these novels and the rich characters within that keep us coming back for more.

What is the deal with these complicated love triangles? …a contagion in YA novels these days, but I suppose you must have some love-and-tension between demon thrashings and the political scandals of Shadow Hunters, right? What would the plot be otherwise?

Speaking of plot, it’s not the first time I’ve read this one in Clare’s vast Shadow Hunter collection. Apart from the captivating setting and a few endearing characters, there’s not too much different here than in the other trilogies (and double-trilogy?) she’s tackled. The nod to Dante’s Inferno a la Belial/Lilith was more complex this time, though. Clare writes a good character, and these ones come draped in a lot of frivolous entertainment, delivered in a bountiful lexis, and peppered with some none-too-subtle real-world social issues represented by the marginalised lives of warlocks and werewolves as they scrape out their existence amid the rich and privileged little demi-angels.

It was nice to read a bit of grey in some of these flawlessly attractive characters, though they were still the flock of gorgeous almost angelic beings we’ve come to expect, with their pale skin, piercing eyes, thick locks of luscious hair, chiselled cheekbones, marble Greek-godlike physiques, and sculpted curves. Not a mediocre duckling in the whole Shadow Hunter brood. Unless we’re referring to the twisted and downright evil people, of course. Those nasties predictably have gaping mouths and black teeth with sallow skin and cackling laughs. Amid a typical dichotomy of characters, though, there was a lot more grey going on in the hearts and minds of several of the aesthetically beautiful people. We need that. Keeps us guessing. Keeps us reading. Also: Lucy keeps you reading.

I enjoyed the first two of this series, and I could see it heading somewhere newly interesting, possibly even different, but we drifted back to the same old—which one can only say if they’ve spent a whole lot of time reading these generational stories of downworlders and the descendants of angels—and though Tessa, Will, and Jem (from the best series in the whole collection imo) appeared more often, this finale was a little underwhelming. Except for Lucy, who is the best of all. But I suppose after fifteen novels of battling demons in layered pinafores and silk gloves, things become a mite *yawn* predictable (oh, dear, not more ichor spilling, but of course, as they are leaving the theatre it is befitting to be attacked by demons in the alleyway). I do prefer all the demon slaying in a frilly frock and suit jacket with a clopping escape in a horse drawn Hackney rather than the  nondescript jeans and t-shirts Clary wore when she first introduced us to the ‘down’ world. Give me flying motorcycles, though, those can stay.

As for the ending, I know a lot of people are … disappointed(?) and even angry, but as if you couldn’t see that coming some four hundred pages ago…I didn’t mind how this culminated and ended. It was fast-paced and climactic, with all the faces involved. A grand finale. 

And look, I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but these covers are quite something—and they do tell a fair sliver of the tale.

***

‘So fragile, these human bodies of yours.’ — Belial 

‘And yet, you want one, isn’t that strange…’ — Matthew

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