This book has so much heart, and plenty of its aspect had me absolutely captivated. Yami was so easy to love and root for. Yes, she’s not perfect—she messes up, misunderstands things, creates misunderstandings, and doesn’t always react to life rationally. But she’s so authentic in her narration, even when she withholds truth about herself from other characters, and the reasons for her choices are always understandable. Her experience of feeling othered because of who she is and trying to protect herself by blending in was written in such a relatable way. There were so many lines that had me choked up. I also loved her relationship with Bo, its whole progression from tentative friendship to a closer connection to romance with all the hiccups and stumbles in between. A really well done slow burn there.

Speaking of Bo, she was such a great example of how being brave about who you are helps other people. She’s so real and flawed, and I really liked her as a character in her own right, as well as Yami’s love interest. I also enjoyed all the comparing and contrasting between them, especially the part of the book where Yami spends the holidays with Bo’s family. I felt like both girls helped each other grow and lifted each other up. I do wish there was a bigger, more consistent focus on other members of their friend circle, though, and on the school in general. I felt a little let down by how little Catholic school there was in a book that literally has Catholic School in the title. There was a bit here and there, but overall it felt more like a regular school in a conservative society. The religious aspect of it ended up playing a far bigger part in Cesar’s arc then Yami’s, and Yami’s story was far more about family than school, so in that way, I felt the title was misleading. 

Expectations aside, the family struggles story pulled me in. I hesitate to say I enjoyed it because it deals in such heavy, sad matters. No kid should spend months and months saving money and making contingency plans for when they feel they will be inevitably disowned. Even though it does all work out well in the end, I was left feeling sad for Yami and Cesar and everything they went through. (Spoilers come next, TW: homophobia and its impact)

Yeah, sure, their mom comes around and becomes “all Pride and rainbows,” and at the end of the book Yami is in that euphoric relief stage over it, but I don’t feel like the damage their mom did was properly addressed. Yes, she comes around; that happens after her homophobic behavior has driven one of her children to be suicidal and put the other in a position where she was basically convinced she’s not loved and should just focus on ensuring she has enough money to not end up in the street. Not to mention the rest of the pressure she put on her children, and how it’s a miracle they didn’t end up hating each other with how she kept creating that divide between them.

I wish there was more done to make it clear the family will be working on healing their relationships, but instead all the pain felt almost dismissed in the end. Like, a “things have changed now, happy end, let’s not dwell” kind of vibe.

Something else I'd like to note: Cesar is a great example of a secondary character’s arc unfolding in plain sight without the POV character fully understanding what’s going on. To me, an adult with a bunch of relevant life experiences, it was very clear the guy wasn’t okay; I guessed at the specific brand of not-okay-ness he was dealing with early on, and I drew the correct conclusions from all the moments Yami looked back at late in the story going, “I should have known then.” But she did *not* know then—not because she’s a bad person or didn’t love her brother enough, but because she’s a teenager already struggling with so much, and sometimes she gets self-absorbed the way teenagers do, and she just lacks experience and information (especially since Cesar deliberately withholds quite a lot from her). So it makes sense why she misses the signs of trouble, but they still remain obvious for the reader equipped to catch them, even though it’s a first person POV novel where we never leave Yami’s headspace. And we get to witness Cesar’s entire journey without most of its beat being clearly explained and called for what they are—a great exercise in showing vs telling.

Overall, while this book inspired a lot of less than enjoyable emotions in me, it portrays a bunch of difficult subjects in a relatable, genuine manner, and the character arcs at the heart of the story are pretty well-crafted. The plot, on the other hand, meandered a lot, especially in the first half of the book. It became more focused as it progressed, but for a big part of the story, I wasn’t sure where it was going and which aspects I was meant to focus on more. I’m not 100% sure all the questions the plot was asking at the start matched the answers we were given at the end, so to speak. This book is already great in so many ways, but I think an extra editing pass with a focus on structure could have made it shine even brighter.

Fern is a 12-year-old girl who is happy and content living in an “off-the-grid sustainable farming community” that an adult reader will recognize as a cult a page in. That is, until her mother spirits her away to a tiny town in California to start anew in the big, scary outside world. What follows is a chain of Fern’s attempts to get back home, to that wondrous place of stability and safety, underscored by growing realizations that maybe her mom has a point after all. Maybe there was something wrong with the farm.

This is a subject I didn’t expect to see explored in a middle grade book for some reason, so when Storygraph recced it to me out of the blue, I got curious. Definitely no regrets about picking it up! This was a super engrossing read, though I keep wondering what it would’ve been like for me if I read it as a kid. Would it be as obvious to me what an unreliable narrator Fern is? Would I be cheering on her to succeed at her attempts to contact Dr. Ben, or would I feel the same “no, no, no, please don’t let her succeed” type of tension? I guess I’ll never know, but I enjoyed the experience of rooting against the protagonist’s choices because I was so invested in her getting better, and she was doing all the things that could only lead to worse. I was also super invested in her mom’s arc and felt for her a lot: things were so incredibly hard for her, and she’d fucked up a lot to make them this way, but there she was being brave and taking responsibility. The author did a great job showing only the glimpses of her journey that it was logical for Fern to see and let the reader piece together the rest —and it all made a perfect amount of sense.

The cast of secondary and tertiary characters skewed heavily toward wonderfully kind people anyone would be lucky to have in their lives, and at times I found myself wondering how Fern and her mom would fare if Babs wasn’t so caring, or if the family owning the motel Fern’s mother worked at wasn’t so kindhearted, or if Fern’s science teacher was less enthusiastic, or if Eddy was less inclined to roll with all the little weirdnesses Fern carried with her after spending half her life in a cult. Then it got me wondering what it says about me that I apparently don’t consider basic kindness to be a natural state of human society, and… I guess I’ll leave the details of that existential crisis out of this review, lol. Suffice it to say, this is what the world should be, and I’m happy the book depicts it that way. Plus, it does show how good people can fuck up with the best of intentions, and there are characters who are less inclined to be accepting and helpful, plus someone I can only earnestly describe as morally gray. All in all, every character here felt well-developed, with clear goals and motivations, and I enjoyed getting to know them.

Fern’s journey from total indoctrination to beginning to embrace life in this big, scary outside world was overall beautifully done, with all the setbacks, stumbles, and lingering fears that are logical in this situation, but maintaining a strong sense of hope throughout. I loved how reading books was a big part of what made her start doubting Dr. Ben’s teaching, as well as how she didn’t discard *everything* she’d been taught on the farm wholesale, instead choosing to preserve the parts that rang true: caring about nature, wanting to make the world a better place. She wasn’t always a pleasant character to follow, being the kind of surly only a lost and angry pre-teen can be, but even at her worst, she made me feel for her.

The single small grip I have with the book is that when a number of bad things happened at the same time late in the story, it felt like a bit of an overkill. Individually, each of the converging storylines made sense, but something about the way they came together felt like overkill. Too dramatic, not quite natural, too convenient in a certain way (I’m trying to avoid spoilers here, can you tell). After that specific point, though, a really satisfying ending still happened, and my enjoyment of the book wasn’t really dampened.

Also, this is a second MG book in a row that I pick up randomly without expecting to see any queer themes, and it has queer characters just casually existing in the MC’s orbit, treated no differently than straight ones??? Love this. It’s such a great proof that despite all the problems the world faces on the daily, certain things do get better, society does get more accepting. As humans, we do grow.

This book made a great bedtime horror story for me: the kind where nothing truly nightmare-inducing happens, but there’s enough tension and disturbing stuff to keep my attention firmly off my own day-to-day worries. I enjoyed the family drama parts and all the contemplations on how our families shape us even when we reject them and/or get rejected by them, but we can still choose who we are. Those themes were handled in a way that resonated with me a lot.

Vesper grew on me fast, her jaded and cynical outlook providing a cool lens for this type of story. I ended up really, really liking her when she just kept illustrating that not expecting much good from the world doesn’t have to mean actively wishing it harm. I cheered for her during her ups and worried for her during her downs. Unfortunately, other characters didn’t have half the same depth and appeal. Most of them were just walking clichés the author hardly bothered to flesh out.

I went into the story practically blind, knowing only that it’s a “coming home after a prolonged absence and confronting the skeletons in the family’s closets” type of horror that may or may not have something to do with cults. As such, the reveal about what sort of cult this is exactly turned out to be a real surprise. Other twists were much easier to call in advance, but this first one really, really got me. Though looking back, I think the foreshadowing for it wasn’t discreet either, it just went completely over my head because

it didn’t occur to me to associate Satanism with the type of rigid rules, “questioning is discouraged” etc belief system presented here. I know this isn’t an atypical horror movie/satanic panic-style interpretation, but it just makes *so little sense*

.

On a related subject,

I had trouble accepting the bad guy here was actually Satan/Lucifer. He just never seemed ancient enough, or powerful enough, or overall impressive enough—neither in his personality, nor in his actions, especially toward the end. I kind of wish Vesper’s assumption that this was simply a cult leader believing himself to be Satan (and indeed possessing some weird horror powers on top of that) ended up true. Or maybe this could be an average demonic Jo using the big boss’s name to mess with a bunch of mortals and score himself brownie points in hell. Maybe that’s what happened there. But as actual Satan, he just didn’t live up to my expectations, lol.

Overall, the fright factor here is rather mild, outside of a few gorey body horror moments late in the book. The focus is more on the family drama and learning to live with your past, and those parts were quite well done (though, again, I wish the cast of characters was more three-dimensional). Also, I liked the metaphor with the lamb early-ish on. Transparent, but effective.

This book is a great example of a reluctant protagonist story. Jebi is, truth be told, hardly protagonist material at all. They’re more of an everyman. They don’t start off with any particularly strong convictions, and even when the plot forces them to develop some, their beliefs stay kind of fuzzy. They react instead of forming their own goals. On the few occasions when they take action, they opt for choices that are hard to describe as anything other than… uh… sort of stupid. They wonder very little about the world around them and it’s always a surprise revelation to them when they realize other people’s/being’s experiences are not like their own. When things work out in their favor, it’s nearly always through someone else’s actions.

The story is actually full of characters who would make far better protagonists for a resistance story at a glance. Bongsunga, Jebi’s sister, has better goals, stronger motivations, and deeper wounds. Vei has a far more complex and high-stakes arc, not to mention a more compelling personality. Even Arazi, the automaton dragon, while given voice by Jebi, ends up with a more solid agenda and a unique, compelling perspective. And yet the way Jebi’s life is intertwined with all of theirs makes them work as a main character. Through them, all of those bigger, stronger stories are woven together into a solid fabric, and they also show the classic rebellion narrative from a far less classic side. 

Reading this, I kept getting flashbacks about reading Torn by Rowenna Miller. The two books don’t have that much in common, but in Torn, the protagonist also lives in a difficult, oppressive social situation (though in her case it’s fantasy-France on the eve of revolution and not fantasy-Korea getting invaded by fantasy-Japan), also has a sibling involved with the rebels, and also prefers to make do with the cards she’s given instead of considering the possibility of change. The similarities just about end there, but my feelings reading the two books were almost the same. I find it so, so hard to empathize with protagonists like that. This “making do” goes against my personal morals, convictions, and life experiences in the most jarring ways. It’s weird, but a honest outright villain protagonist is easier for me to stomach and follow with interest than these victims turned accomplices who illustrate that “silence of the good people” concept. But that’s also why I feel it’s important for me to read about characters like that. Whether I like that or not, the real world is full of people just like that. The lens of fiction helps me understand how they might come to make their choices and form their opinions, as well as accept that their perspectives may be more nuance than I’m tempted to give them credit for. It’s one of those issues when confronting something in a story first makes dealing with it in real life a bit simpler. So in that sense, this book was a 100% valuable experience. But damn, was it a frustrating one.

I liked the prose: it felt simple and to the point, but amidst the simplicity there were also a bunch of words I had to look up, and a bunch of them were the kind of oddly specific descriptors I didn’t know I desperately needed to know. The blend of magic and technology in the worldbuilding was exciting, though I could use a bit more clarity in the way the magic system is presented, given how important it is to the plot. The way the concept of colonizers taking away the conquered nation’s culture and repurposing it for their own ends is made literal was kind of brilliant, in a horrifying sort of way, and gave me chills. Arazi was easily the best part of the story with its outlook, its earnest curiosity about everything around it, and its eventual moral choices. I kept wondering what other automata might be like if they were given voice and freedom to act, too. I’m also, predictably, a big fan of how queernormative the setting ended up being and how Jebi being nonbinary is completely, utterly normalized. This isn’t a book about being nonbinary, it’s a book with a nonbinary character, and I really, really liked the rep here. 

As for the plot… The bones of it were good, I think, but the routes the narrative took between the big plot points were often questionable. Sometimes, it felt like things happened just because the author wanted them to happen, and other times, what should have been a logical consequence of Jebi’s lack of common sense just stalled for a few chapters. There were also aspects of worldbuilding that felt oddly tacked on, such as one of the characters being a gumiho—it was so underexplored. I also don’t think I’m a fan of the whole Moon thing. On the other hand, it’s possible that I’m looking at the setting from a westerner perspective and not catching some nuance.

In the previous two books, Iris was my favorite of the Bright Falls trio, so I was looking forward to her story even though I was a little meh on the previous book. I guess my feelings are mixed on this one. Ultimately, I had fun, and I liked getting to know Iris through her own POV and comparing her perceptions of herself and others’ perception of her. The romantic plot provided a nice mixture of sweet and angsty, there was a bunch of fun romcom moments, and the fact that Iris apparently became a romance author between book made for some amusing meta commentary. Oh, and speaking of meta stuff: I spent most of the book comparing Iris and Danika from Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert, and then the nameless romance book Stevie picked up in Claire’s shop was… so obviously Take a Hint, Dani Brown??? I loved that touch somehow. 

I also really liked the small storyline with all the art Iris has made over the course of the book and how it told the story of all the feelings she’d been denying. It was quite possibly my favorite part of the book. It really made up for the lack of something else I had expected: I thought the theater stuff would be more prominent, showing how the characters’ actual relationship and the fake dating scheme and playing fictional characters all intersected. But there was really very little of that.

What I decidedly didn’t enjoy was how Stevie’s anxiety was handled, and I’m saying this as someone with nearly lifelong medication-resistant GAD. There were 100% some good, relatable moments! But also, she had apparently been living with her disorder since school, she had been steadily getting therapy, annnnnd she barely had a coping mechanism and a half? Literally every few chapters there’d be some moment that got me nodding along, like, yeah, I’ve been there, and here are ten different things to be tried to make the situation more bearable, and Stevie did none of those things. Until very late in the book when she was suddenly successfully coping, but the narrative completely glossed over the process and just focused on the results. To make it all fit together I started headcanoning that she was just having a bad relapse after her break-up, but it also contradicted some other parts of the narrative, and overall the vibe was very off. 

Another thing that was off: how while the book helpfully spelled out that slut shaming is bad and it’s okay for Iris to enjoy sex without commitment, the narrative showed the opposite. Everyone just aggressively wanted her to finally find true love and settle down. When it was done in an overbearing, pushy way (see: Iris’s family), it was totally bad, but when the exact same thing was prefaced with “sweetie” and done by well-meaning friends, it suddenly was… meant to be perceived as something wholly different? Except I failed to spot a distinct difference there, except for the packaging.

Despite all of the above plus some smaller grievances, I found myself invested in Iris’s journey and in the chemistry she had with Stevie, and the ending was so satisfying to read. The timely realization! The grand gesture! The finally talking it all out! There was some really lovely writing there. A bit cheesy, maybe, but hey, what’s a romcom without a bit of cheese?

Objectively speaking, this book has a lot of problems. Like, it’s very decidedly not perfect. But it also has so much mindless fun interspersed with poignant, relatable moments of the “how to say ‘no’ to the bad things your parents made you believe about yourself and the world” variety, that I found the problems perfectly forgivable. It made for a fantastic bedtime story that made me smile a lot.

Coal really charmed me as protagonist. I mean, sometimes his puns got as cringy as his waxing poetics about Hex’s perfection, but it felt like a feature, not a bug, given his arc. It was abundantly clear how his “perpetual class clown” behavior came from a mix of wanting to lighten other people’s loads and not trusting himself to do it via means other than cracking jokes. He was so kind and so lost, but then he found himself and opened up, and it was just so good to see that played out. I admit I cared about his coming into his own + his and his brother’s relationship with their father far more than I cared about the way too insta-lovey for my tastes romance, but the romance played nicely into Coal’s personal arc and had so many cute and sometimes poignant moments.

I also really liked the dynamics between Coal, Kris, and Iris as a friend group, as well as Coal and Kris’s relationship as brothers. They’re all so there for each other, but also have certain persistent misconceptions about each other that very much make sense in context. I do wish there was a bit more focus on Iris’s family situation and on Iris in general—I feel like there was a way to give her more space without taking away from Coal and Kris and their journeys dealing with what their parents  had made of them. As it was, it sometimes felt like she was a pawn for the narrative, not just for the antagonists governing the characters’ lives. When she did get moments to shine and open up, I consistently loved her.

My big problem with the book was the flimsy, inconsistent worldbuilding that in turn made the external plot feel flimsy and contrived. The scenes where things just boiled down to relationships—”two sons dealing with their father trying to mold them into figures on the board and focusing more on the public image while they’re all falling apart when the cameras aren’t running,” this kind of thing—really hit home. But whenever I thought too hard about the exact circumstances, my brain threatened to combust. The way all this holiday realms worked made so little sense. Like, on one hand, they have their own ecosystems with their citizens and companies and paparazzi, and magic is very important to all this, but on the other hand, they all secretly go to human universities like Yale to get degrees in human business and international relations and whatnot? That alone made me want to poke at stuff. And then the joy economy and the relationships between holidays, and “keeping other holidays from whole different seasons in check”—all of that is so crucial to the plot, but so riddled with holes and non-explanations. Also, the whole vision of all the holidays is incredibly Western-centric, or perhaps even US-centric at times. And don’t get me started at those “we don’t care about the religious aspect of the holidays we govern because human religions change over time etc,” because nope, that’s not quite what happens.

But yeah, despite all those problems the things that worked, worked, and I’m glad I stumbled upon this book. It turned out to be a great distraction right when I needed it!

Anthologies are always so hard to rate and review because their contents are so varied. And this one, for me, was such a mixed bag. On one hand, there was hardly a single story whose premise/core idea I didn’t enjoy. On the other hand, the execution often was a bit of a letdown, with more vibes than actual storytelling. You know those short stories that start off with a specific narrative promise but then dissolve into just, “I don’t know what’s even happening here, but the prose is sure pretty and it’s giving me some type of feeling?” There are sure a lot of them in here, and while I enjoy this type of shorts now and then, I probably shouldn’t read so many in a row again. They all just mash up together into one chain of vibes and pretty words.

For a few stories that did stand out to me, I’d like to name:

- The Shape of My Name by Nino Cipri: a strong starter with sufficiently weird and painful time travel and a fraught relationship between a son trapped by being seen as a daughter and a mother trapped in a linear life. It’s got all those vibes and words, but also character arcs.
- Contents of Care Package to Etsath-tachri, formerly Ryan Andrew Curran by Holly Heisey: a really small one, just a collection of three letters to someone who chose to be an alien. The mother’s letter made me tear up, in a good way.
- Chosen by Margaret Tenser: I always appreciate twists on the Chosen One trope, and the somewhat tongue-in-cheek writing style here is fun and really stands out.
- Where Monsters Dance by A. Merc Rustad: largely one of those “vibes and words” type, but with *really* beautiful words and *really* thick, dark vibes. Far more of a fairy tale than it claims to be, I feel, if you like your fairy tales raw. Very voidpunk.
- The Thing on the Cheerleading Squad by Molly Tanzer: I found the writing somewhat clunky, but what can I say, I’m a sucker for all and any queer reimaginings of Lovecraft’s mythos, and this one had a feel similar to Season 1 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, back when it was all campy high school. Fun stuff.

Overall, it was great to see so much trans and nonbinary representation under one cover, and some of the ideas here will certainly stick with me!

It has taken me a weirdly long time to read the book, mostly due to all the numerous breaks I took. The weird part is that every time I sat down to read, I was quite engrossed, but then I was never in a hurry to return to reading it. I’ll have to think more about the reasons behind it, but I guess maybe it’s a case of setting my expectations incorrectly? The last part of Legendborn along with the beginning of this installment kind of made me think there would be a lot of focus on the Order, with other facets of this multilayered world getting explored on the side. Instead, without giving too much away, the balance was pretty much the opposite. I did love all the inventive worldbuilding, don’t get me wrong, especially exploring new places like the Crossroads Lounge and the Volition. But maybe the narrative pivoted a bit too much here and there for my taste, or that the plot overall is a bit clunkier than the intricately put together first novel led me to expect. Or maybe it’s just that middle book syndrome where a lot is happening, but even the payoffs are actually a actually just set-ups for what’s to come.

Much as I enjoyed the worldbuilding, the characters were the real highlight of the journey for me. It was great to see Alice gain more personality and agenda of her own. William is a sweetheart. I wish the story had more Lark, I liked him while he was there. I’ve also come to enjoy Valec’s presence, although I have so many suspicions about his motives. Sel continues to get all the best dialogue lines and I continue to favor his side of the love triangle based on 50% that and 50% on the fact that he actually spends enough time with Bree for me to buy the attraction developing.

Although, there were a few moments there where I felt like the author might be at least flirting with the idea of a poly solution to the triangular problem 👀 If so, I kind of support it on principle while also being vaguely against it on the grounds of not being a big fan of Nick/his dynamic with Sel.

Bree herself remains complex, relatable, and interesting all through the story. She does make her share of dumb mistakes and impulsive decisions that backfire, but they always make perfect sense within the narrative. Like, yeah, maybe an actual adult with a support network consisting of other actual adults, great emotional regulation and considerable life experiences would have done better, but alas, what we have is a teen who’s really going through it, and that’s one really well-written teen. 

I guess there are a couple of things I low-key want to judge her for, such as

pulling Nick into those Arthurian memories so many times without knowing what’s happening to him in real life—like come on, what if you do that while he’s in the middle of a conversation, or a fight, or any situation that requires his utmost attention? If you’re so worried about him all the time, why not worry about that?

But I also can easily understand why she does that—she’s a grieving, confused, angry emotional teen living from trauma to trauma, this is her way of checking in with the boy she loves, and everything she’s dealing with is so big and low-key derealization-inducing, of course she can’t stop and focus on concerns about something that may or may not be happening elsewhere. And then there’s also the Really Big Life-Altering Choice she makes at the end of the book that had me wanting to scream at her not to do it all the while, but also, she’s making it right in the wake of another Really Big Life-Altering Choice while being really traumatized. And she’s impulsive, that’s one of her most notable traits. And also, I feel like the narrative itself does a good job framing this as a bad choice that seemsx like a good idea at the time. I’m definitely excited to learn what comes from it in the next book, though I’ll do my best to form fewer expectations this time!

I’ve got a complicated relationship with the LitRPG genre. On one hand, it always sounds like something made for me, since I love gaming and the idea of turning game mechanics into part of the narrative appeals to me greatly. On the other hand, most of what I’ve read in the genre, with only a couple of exceptions, left me bored and disappointed, so after some point, I kind of stopped trying to get acquainted with it. Except a bunch of my friends have been super excited about the Dungeon Crawler Carl for a while, so eventually, I fell to peer pressure. And boy, I’m so glad I did, because this has been A Romp!

One thing I had doubts about starting out was the combination of the really dark premise (the whole world ends and the survivors get stuck in an intergalactic dungeon crawl-themed reality show, dying by the million) and the humor everyone promised me. I wasn’t sure how possible it was to combining the two aspects without trivializing stuff I don’t like seeing trivialized. Unbelievably, it turns out it’s quite possible! There’s much hilarity here, but the horror of everyone’s circumstances is always there in the background. The humor happens in spite of that, in that pretty organic way where things get so absurdly bad that you can’t help but laugh every time an occasion arises. And the dungeon does provide plenty of occasion, between all the over-the-top notifications, ridiculous takes on the D&D-ish tropes, and the AI having a foot fetish. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I feel like in a story with a less dark premise, I would find a lot of the jokes obnoxious, but here, somehow, it just works. 

I also genuinely enjoyed how the blend of videogame and reality show was handled. It’s a game, so of course there are rules that the players must follow and can exploit if they’re smart and inventive enough. But it’s also a show, so of course those rules get constantly tweaked and rigged to provide more entertainment to the viewers—and a steadier current of money for the organizers. And then of course there are all those tensions and intrigues and dirty deals between all the intergalactic capitalists involved, and the crawlers have no way to be fully aware of it all but still need to take whatever scraps of information they get into account if they want to survive long enough. It’s sort of like Hunger Games, if the tributes were forced to deal with sponsors directly while managing their risks of dying horribly. Except with levels and loot and skill points.

Carl is a fun protagonist who’s doing his best to keep it together while maintaining a moral compass, and Donut is an endless source of entertainment in a way only cats can be. Other characters all provide their own layers to the narrative, whether they’re fellow crawlers or the various cogs in the whole dungeon show machine. The action is always tense and inventive and entertaining. Finally, the audio production is superb, more of an audiodrama podcast than an audiobook, and I’m very glad I opted for this way of getting acquainted with the story. Honestly, I’ve had so much fun with this book. I will definitely continue the series.

I liked this final installment more than the second book and slightly less than the first one, I think. Or maybe I liked it nearly as much, except that I’m still so nostalgic for the first book’s specific cozy fantasy vibe and I kept waiting for it to be recreated, but—much like was the case with the second installment—it’s just not there. The stakes are too high (life or death, even, at one point), the balance of fairy tale darkness and whimsy skews all too often toward the former, and the whole vibe is more “save the kingdom” than “settle into a new home while also exploring it all the time, for science.” And hey, none of that is bad! Plus, all the events stem very logically from previous ones, and really, it would probably make very little sense to have this book be all “Emily and Wendell settle into life in Faerie.” I just miss that cozy vibe.

Anyway, Emily and Wendell do spend some time settling into life in Faerie, and the lower-stakes moments were, for the most part, my favorite. I do wish there was more depth to all the faerie courtiers, because they are presented as just this nearly uniform mass of weirdly dressed spectators. I would have preferred to see more examples of the fae being alien and weird and practicing green and orange morality that goes ever so slightly beyond the boundaries of human comprehension. Give me new, different flavors of weird! Even just glimpses of them! But alas, most of that was supplied by the characters I’d already known, though at least I can’t complain about the quality of those familiar flavors. It was pretty interesting to see Wendell shed all remaining pretense of humanity and lean into his fairy prince/king persona. I also liked seeing this explicitly addressed in both Emily’s inner musings and her conversations with a friend—the impact this has on their relationship, what sort of worries she experiences because of it, how they’re quelled. I’ve also come to really like Lord Taran, reluctantly benevolent monster that he is. Pretty much every scene he was in was a highlight.

Predictably, I really enjoyed the focus on stories as more of less laws for the Fae. I sort of wanted to see even more done with it, or rather, for the characters to choose a more fluid, proactive approach to using a story to solve the central plot problem, twisting the narrative from within, so to speak. But I also understand that this kind of approach would require different characters. Emily isn’t, after all, a writer—she’s a scholar who wants to document things exactly as they work, and she stays true to herself all through the story. Which is something I appreciate, because she’s really a great character whose development is logical and consistent. And I did enjoy how she eventually handled the challenge.

It was a great touch to see the big problem from the first book essentially become the solution here in the last—it really pulled the whole story together. And I liked seeing the villain get reformed rather than disposed of, just as much as I liked the implication of that happy state of things *not* lasting ever after potentially.

All in all, this was a pretty satisfying conclusion to the story. Seeing some of the characters from Ljosland again was a welcome surprise, the Faerie was a darkly magical place, Shadow is the best doggo, and Orga is the terriblest cat. Whatever Heather Fawcett writes next, I’m definitely game to check it out.