I almost cried when I had 30 pages left and had to go back to work from my lunch break and couldn't finish this. IT IS SO INCREDIBLE. It has practically ruined my life. READ THIS READ THIS READ THIS.

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Re-reading seven years later, and this book still breaks my heart.

Unfinished at page 55. Nothing wrong with the story, just super boring.

The point of view switching without any explanation is beyond obnoxious. Giving up at 1:42 because I don't care enough to guess who's speaking.

This juvenile and poorly-written book reads like a book report from a sixth grader on Daniel Defoe's book on pirates. West constantly references Defoe's work while failing to cite any other research. I'm pretty sure the movies are more historically accurate, supernatural creatures and all. This was laughably bad.

I loved the writing, and Ananna, and the fact that she is a sassy pirate who doesn't give a flying fuck what you think.

I wish there was more emotion and backstory from Naji, and more explanation of the magic system, and that there wasn't such a huge MFing cliffhanger.

This book was so engaging and so fun. I still felt like I didn't really get to know Naji, but I do like him. I loved Marjani.

Spoiler

I also loved that the ending was happy, but not happily ever after. Ananna and Naji are both so independent that it makes me happy that they are both doing what they love, communicating through magical brain text messages, and meeting when they can. Unexpected and modern.

18% of the book was an introductory history of Ben Jonson. I made it through Act 1, but even with that history I still felt like I had no idea what was happening. I'd maybe read an annotated version.

I audio-skimmed this as it was so boring it was impossible to pay attention. Felt like a textbook about Galileo with letters from his daughter thrown in to make it book-length and make it appear to be unique.