I lied. It wasn’t the end. I read this one too. 

 

As much as I still find this writing crass and juvenile, I’m a complete sucker for this INCreDIBLE PLOT which careens along at a dangerous pace, turns and whips in myriad unexpected directions and I CANNOT PUT IT DOWN to the absolute righteous dismay of my more mature and adult sentiments—and eventually, despite those awkward bursts of laughter at the more ‘supposedly’ intimate (car-wreck) love scenes—the engrossing plot of politics and perfidy, of dark lies and darker secrets, takes precedence over whatever else distracts, and flings me down this breakneck trajectory till I collide with its gobsmacking finish. 

 

The Literature teacher in me is giving this a 2 star review with criticisms on repetition, a reminder of the value of figurative language over the use of literal anatomical terminology, and encouragement to increase the vocabulary to a more sophisticated level, a few steps beyond the scope of tiktok and text messaging.... 

 

(BUT THE JUVENILE IN ME LISTENED TO THE AUDIOBOOK ON HER FEET, PACING, FLINCHING--EYES WIDE AT THE TWISTS, NARROWED AT THE BETRAYALS, THOROUGHLY CAPTIVATED BY THE DRAGONS!!) 

 Story was decent, characters interesting, but lacked the depth in development I was wanting…. I enjoyed the story, the twists and turns were nothing out of the ordinary or spectacular, but they were interesting. The writing was nothing especially literary, but the storytelling kept me engaged. 

 

Overall a very good 3.75-star piece. 

 More true romance here amid the ups and downs of learning to trust in a world set up for deception and betrayal. I love the development of the relationship between Selene and Juba, and you could imagine this fiction being truth in another time of history. 

 

The story is better at this stage, and a lot more appealing than the icky middle installation. 

 

Dray writes with spectacular imagination and includes some brilliant endnotes for historical contextualisation. 

 

Despite being mostly fiction placed in astonishing real-world events with once-living persons, this is insightful literature with an educational bent. 

 

Enjoyed this. I look forward to more by Stephanie Dray. 

A return to the emotionally charged vortex of the original novels, we get the Hunger Games story of Haymitch, the man we loath loving, but do so somewhat begrudgingly because it’s so hard not to see his big heart beneath the filthy bastard on the surface. 

 

I didn’t love the last one of these (I say, though still deeply-like-liked it a lot more than other stuff out there), probably because my level of empathy for Snow was … well, nil. But this one recaptures all the deep feels we want from Collins as she says what she wants to scream from the tower-tops of The Capital… in all the imagery of her stunning modern allegory… 

Lots of icky bits throughout delivered without a lot of detail, thankfully. Fictional license spent to the full in this historical setting, but why not? We don’t really know a lot about Cleopatra Selene, and much of what is explored here stays close to the historical timeline (with variations explained by the author in the endnotes), and in context, the embellishments are entirely believable. Well, except for the magic. Sort of. 

An epic tale akin to Beowulf in its content (but not in its telling, for there is literary genius in that ancient work). This was long and involved and takes a fine while to get to the climax, though it starts in the midst of the action.

There was a bland disconnect to characters for the first half of the novel, but in the second half, this improves and we get a bit more depth in various internal struggles.

One does have a lump of pity for Svanhild (the sister) in her yucky situation, but then she makes the most of it (as I imagine women did at that time, and still so often do...) and she triumphs over her own fears and abhorrence. She becomes selfless and caring—though she stands up for herself in all her actions, and this endears us to her over the course of the novel.

The dialogue was fierce and full of emotion: all the stuff of kings and warriors, and in one sense, I had to often remind myself that the author was a woman because this brute dialogue so often felt like it was coming from a man. The action scenes, thick with blood and violence and the thoughts of men at war (overwhelming guilt and remorse, anger and sorrow) gave way to cold and calculated political exchanges. A little romance skimmed the pages, but even in these, there was less connection to the characters than necessary to engage in the emotion of these wee affairs—for most of these mere sexual exchanges were also political or instinctual, brought to us in scenes of mindless pillaging and rape and exchanges of daughters for alliances. Ugh. What a world to endure as a woman!

Overall, this was a decent 3.9 —highly proficient and an obvious work of extensive research and much heart; I wanted to relate more to the characters—to feel their highs and lows—and if I can’t have that, I want the writing to be literary genius in even a little way, to sense more through the beautifully crafted words than is offered in telling, but please reel me into the emotion and drama! And while emotion and drama were present, I wasn’t quite in the thick of it, any more than any other decent storyteller could have compelled me with the description of scenes and the revelation allowed through dialogue.

A stringy clingy shadow follows you into this reading (audiobook narration is fab). It was a weird, surreal experience, but the allegory was poignant; this is what it is to grow up feeling unloved by a world where your face and presence is hated, envied, suspected, mistrusted— and you can’t change the perspective of the fools and the uninformed, yet you still need to test everything to see where you might find that depth of feeling you crave. Of course, such depth can only be found in true love and freedom—but where is such stuff available? 

 

Ah, well, here it possibly is—at least, is promised to exist: tucked among us in a hidden alternate reality that zings with power you’d love to wield in the real world. If only. But this University lies somewhere between the physical states of that so-called united America, with students fighting the same proverbial fight they’ve been battling for (we can say) centuries (now)—and in this alternate American reality, it’s ugly, bloody, stark (which sounds a lot like the real world), but on the page, the  academics rise victorious. Somewhat. 

 

And there comes a distant whispered echo of shimmering gratification at the end of this phantasmagorical narrative. 

 

This took a lot to get into, and the three-fifths chunk in the middle was middling, sometimes confused, verging on not-so-poetically repetitive, but then the last fifth of the narrative is a fast-paced spiral to the finish (best part of the book, but you can’t just skip to the end or you’d miss the tar-thick content that develops context for the slippery road to the finish). 

This novel was such a delightful surprise! 

 

What a fun, humorous, heartwarming, cosy fantasy. It reminded me a bit of The House in the Cerulean Sea in its writing style, but felt like an animated fantasy on the page. Full of unexpected adventurous turns and a slow-burn romance that emerges between a bunch of good village friendships formed along the way, reading this novel is definitely how you want to spend a rainy Spring Saturday afternoon. 

What a storyteller. Beautiful writing. Captivating characters. McBride is one of our modern literary geniuses, capable of lacing honest humour through a complex web of tense community politics in a delicate period of history. The plot weaves and dips across cultures over time and draws humanity together against common evil, while slipping in a poignant social commentary of America, relevant to the 30s, and still even now.

I ended this one with a smile sending the tears over bumps and wrinkles to run down the sides of my cheeks. The best moving and satisfying way to end a novel…

If they make a Lego version of Moonfall, the wee figurines would probably contain more personality than this dry lot as they are on the page. 

 

The story was slightly better as things plodded on, and by better, I mean that the characters grew up a little. Not a lot, but there were baby steps made on the road to developing complex maturity as multi-dimensional persons. 

 

Still. I’ve seen more emotional commitment from Legomen. 

 

Nature makes itself known—and is one of the more complex characters in the novel. I see the makings of an eco-fantasy-disaster approaching in the third book (not that I’m racing to read it). 

 

I can’t say this rolls along at a turtle’s pace, because the action is constant, but it’s a merry-go-round at top speed with no hope for slowing down to get a grip on if there’s a destination in mind, where the destination might be and just when we might start heading in that direction…if ever…