This book has been on my radar for the longest time, and I've been really looking forward to reading it. A lot of my writer friends were giving it such great praise! So I had high expectations going in, and... unfortunately, they didn't pay off. :( I did find a number of cool ideas here and an interesting way to look at structuring stories that are heavy on found family and interactions between characters in an ensemble cast. Those ideas are laid out clearly and comprehesibly in the book... many times over. All of it is just so repetitive! I think I'd have liked this more as a short series of blog posts that get to the point.

I also didn't like how the term "the Heroine's journey" is so gendered? Yes, the author states multiple times that characters of any genre can be heroes or heroines. But why bring in a gendered term at all? The archetype the author calls a 'heroine' may as well have been named a leader, since their role is basically to bring people together and delegate tasks/areas of influence to them. Or a harmonizer, a unifier, something along those lines. If we're talking about a non-gender-specific role in the narrative, why use a gendered world for it and tie all those gender stereotypes to that? You know, the man/hero goes out alone in the night and slays the mamoth, the woman/heroine stays in the cave and keeps the hearth warm for everyone to gather round, all that. 

Wow, this book took me ages to read, didn't it? And it wasn't just because of its size. I'm not quite sure why I had to drag myself through some parts, because I mostly really liked it. There's a lot of originality here. The plot is built on one of my favorite tropes: magic users getting heavily regulated and contained by people in power. The characters are all fully developed and well-written, and the MC is basically a Lawful Good person who realizes he can be either lawful or good. There's interesting politics. The setting is nuanced and rich. The plot has a lot of interesting twists. Overall, this is definitely a book I'm going to recommend to people.

However, I think the story could benefit from being tightened up. There were a lot of scenes here that didn't directly serve the larger plot. I didn't mind some of them, because they deepened my understanding of the characters and the world around them. However, there was just a lot of repetition, like Stella constantly thinking about Tashué’ being a tinman for paragraphs on end. Those parts grew frustrating fast—I found myself skimming over them, thinking, Yeah, okay, okay, I get it, I've read it 10 times already, and I'm afraid that led me to perhaps skipping some new details presented alongside those repetitions. 

At the same time, the plot was generally well-constructed, with so many hidden truths getting skillfully revealed at the precisely right times to completely overthrow my perception of what was going on, while also making complete sense. The backstory facts came fully into play. Etc, etc. But this deftly crafted and already complex narrative was at times obscured by those needless repetitions and detours. Most of the book is complex in a very good way, but parts of it got overcomplicated in a bad way, if that makes sense? And that's why I can't really give it 5 stars.

In spite of those structural problems, I'll state again that the story has a lot of great things going for it and it's definitely made a lasting impression on me. Tashué’, Stella, Jason, Lorne, and all the other characters will stay rent-free in my head for a while. And so will the grim, gleaming city of Yaelsmuir—perhaps the best new setting I got acquainted with in a while. 

 

I have mixed feelings about this one. I was excited to read about a cross-dressing prince running away from home, but when I actually met the character, I grew annoyed by him fast. He was incredibly selfish and shallow, to the point where I din’t want to root for him at all. However, about 75% into the story he actually started acknowledging his flaws and even made me believe he genuinely wanted to fix them. So that was pretty satisfying! But also—simply because of the novella’s size—sort of rushed.

Actually, a lot of things about this book felt rushed, or shallow. I’d love to delve deeper into the worldbuilding. I’d love to figure out why Stephan’s relatives wanted to dispose of him; I get it, they’re homophobic assholes, but did they also see him as a political threat? I’d love to know more about the situation with the war between the two kingoms, too. And to get more backstory on Warren (and, ideally, some chapters from his POV, because that guy’s awesome and too good for Stephan, even the redemption-driven Stephan from the last part of the book). It feels like a little too much was stuffed into the novella’s premise, and then too much had to be glossed over instead following the plot threads. This book definitely would benefit from being at least two tmes as long as it is!

Despite all that, I greatly enjoyed Isabelle Adler’s prose. As I read, I could vividly picture every location the characters visited, feel the chill of autumn turning into winter, and hear the fireworks. And Warren absolutely has my heart. 

 

The first book in this series was enjoyable. The second left me feeling kinda lukewarm. But this third one? Wow! It hit me right in the feels.

Unlike the previous installment in this series, Winter’s Dawn took full advantage of the magic that makes this setting so special. I loved the distinction between the two approaches to the magical arts, and how they worked together, and I just wish I could stay longer with Thomas and Winter and see what happens next. I guess it’s going to involve Winter doing a lot of bad things for good reasons, and Thomas being all fascinated and documenting every move.

Speaking of the main characters—they were both so compelling! Despite the fact that most of the story takes place in a single prison cell (okay, two prison cells, with a tunnel connecting them), there’s just so much packed here. I could talk about Thomas’s arc for a long time, but I think that would spoil a huge part of the story, so I’ll just say that it was wonderfully done, especially the part where he was realizing what exactly he had created before the story even begun. As for Winter, unfortunately, we never get a direct glimpse into their head. But that didn’t stop me from feeling like I got them pretty well by the time the book ended, and they’re the kind of well-intentioned extremist that I can’t help but love.

Also: can I have more M/NB romance in my life, please? I hadn’t realized how much I needed it until I read this book. 

First of all, I really appreciate all the nods at the first book’s events. It’s been ages and ages since I read Carry On, so I worried it wouldn’t be easy to get reacquainted with the characters and the story. However every time I started getting a bit lost at the beginning, the book gave me a handy reminder, to the point where I could easily recall entire scenes from the first novel.

As for this book itself… to be honest, it was chaos. Fun, entertaining chaos touching on interesting themes, but chaos nonetheless. It felt more like a collection of scenes slapped together in mostly chronological order, with new intriguing information sometimes getting injected too close to the end where there was no hope for a resolution, and then it just… ended, with a prolonged confusing climax and a lot of loose ends hanging in place of a resolution. Also, most of the character voices felt weirdly same-ish—even late in the novel, I mostly recognized them by the events they were going through and occasionally even had to glance at the chapter heading to see who was telling the current part of the story.

I did like a lot about the setting—the magic system here is simple yet weirdly engaging, and I adored the whole cauldron of weird and wild magical things America here is. I just wish the author dug deeper into most of these cool details. It’s the same with the characters and the themes: on one hand, there were a lot of scenes that focused on Simon’s mental state and the aftermath of being a magical child soldier and then losing his magic. On the other hand, for each such scene, there were five more where these things seemed to matter very little because the focus was on something very different. Or: Penelope had this entire thing where she had her whole future planned out and it included her boyfriend. Who broke things off with her very early in the book. And then, for the most part, that kind of stopped mattering, either.

Also, I have minimal idea what’s going on in Simon’s and Baz’s relationship by the end of the story. But I guess neither do they, so maybe that’s the point.

All in all… this is, as I expected, very clearly a “Harry, Draco, and Hermione go on a road trip through America after defeating the Dark Lord” fanfic with serial numbers filed off. And I’ve read actual HP fanfic that dealt with the same themes way more thoughtfully and presented better, more consistent narratives. 

I enjoyed other books by this author and expected to enjoy this one, too, especially since the story involves some of my favorite tropes. But the writing felt just so... clumsy? Artificial? I just couldn't get into it, so I stopped trying.

 

Well... for a book about a working-class heroine in a society on the brink of an anti-monarchist revolution, I've gotta say this was pretty damn classist. :D

I did enjoy a lot about the story. It was certainly interesting and twisty, if a little slow, and there's this cool magic system: pretty loose, yet teasing at great narrative opportunities. If I end up continuing the series (I'm not sure yet), it will largely be because of the worldbuilding, especially the magic, and being super curious about what else the author is going to do with it. While I didn't find most of the characters particularly likable, I do think they're compelling and well-rounded. The prose flows well, and the tension is upheld nicely throughout the book.

What I took issue with were the messages I saw here, and, to a large extent, the heroine. I confess I almost DNFed early on because the MC was so annoying, and it's a chore to read something written in first person when you constantly want to yell at the narrator. See, I have this deep seated belief that, in oppressive and unjust societies, victims often become accomplices of the system (while also remaining victims, of course; the world and human nature are complex like that). I'm not saying everyone should become a rebel leader or anything. But I feel like when you're surrounded by wrongness, it's a moral duty to keep acknowledging it instead of adapting and shrugging the really bad parts off. The MC here chose the latter.

I could certainly sympathize with the reasons behind the MC's practicality, with her fear of getting thrown back into the hunger and the cold, with the way she fiercely held onto her shop, the business she'd built. But it grated on me that for the longest time, she didn't want to do anything about the hunger and the cold and the root causes behind them. Or rather: she didn't want anything to be done about that, not even by others. Stay quiet, don't rock the boat, sure, it would be nice if some band-aid fixes were applied to the broken system, but don't you dare rebuild it from the ground. After all, Sophie has managed, through a unique combination of advantages, to carve a place out for herself! And the oppressive nobles give her money! Don't you dare touch the system! 

In other words, she was rather damn egocentric for the longest time. And even later on, when she started acknowledging the causes behind the injustices, the things she could do to make things better for others, and how her silent acceptance made her somewhat complicit... she kind of kept shying away from it all. She kept trying to stay neutral while also leaning toward sympathizing with the nobles. Again, I understood her reasoning and could sympathize with a lot of it, but overall, she reminded me of too many people whose similar approaches to life have brought a lot of pain to me and my loved ones. I do want to say that it's a testament to the author's craft that the book managed to hold my attention from start to finish, despite all these negative associations.

And now for the messages that go beyond the MC's personality: I disliked how it was the rebellion leader who turned out to be the villain, wishing to build a faux democracy through tyrannical means. I disliked how there was this constant implication present: "The nobles actually work so hard and have so many responsibilities, and the angry mobs wishing for their democracy and rights don't even understand what foreign politics are, and anyway, lots of nobles are perfectly good, friendly, kind people who wouldn't mind reforms as a compromise." Except those saintly nobles discussed reforms as abstract concepts and viewed the unhappy masses more as a natural disaster than people with personalities and needs. And while the MC sometimes acknowledged the effects of it, as well as the power imbalance between her and her new friends and boyfriend, there was this constant undercurrent of, "But they're good people, so let's all just be friends."

I wish the story was subtler and went deeper into these things, focusing more on the inherent unfairness of a system where power is obtained through birthright. I wish it acknowledged that even if there surely can be perfectly good people among those in charge in such a system, it's still not necessarily right for them to be in charge and that the commoners still suffer from being into these good people's power. But the narrative preferred to lean into stuff like, "But if a commoner is special and catches a noble's eye, they can benefit instead of suffering!" and it just—it really didn't sit well with me and my views.

Equal opportunities are good. Oppression is bad. Eat the rich.

All my feelings about this aside, the book is rather well-written. 

 

Wow! I loved this more than I loved Red, White & Royal Blue, and I have to tell you I loved RWRB a whole damn lot. Yes, there are some minor flaws here and there, parts that could be shorter and tighter and such. But I can't even focus on those, because 99,99% of this book was exactly what I needed.

It was awesome how Casey McQuiston handled the fantastical element here. This is definitely soft sci-fi with a bit of magic thrown in, but through it all, the story remains just so... realistic? Maybe it's because of my own relationship to every subway I've been in: for some reason, it always feels like this liminal space where anything can happen. But mainly, I think, it's because all the characters are just so well-written and so alive on the page. I feel like they're actual people I've been hanging up with, and I don't just mean August and Jane. I mean absolutely every character in the book.

While I absolutely adored the romance (two girls who are used to running and never putting roots run into each other and become each other's anchors, basically? what's not to love???), every non-romance-related plotline was just as important and exciting. I have such a weakness for stories about queer misfits building homes together and becoming a found family, and this book is that. I also happen to have a weakness for stories about diners and similar places and the working relationships that evolve there, and this book is that, too. And I happen to quite enjoy stories about people making sense of their pasts before they can figure out a future, and new adult stories about getting stuck on that threshold on the cusp of Actual Adult life, and stories about grown-up children and their parents putting distance between them only to slowly come together again, on different terms, with a hope of building a different relationship. In all of these regards, One Last Stop absolutely delivered.

Honestly, it feels like this book was written for me. Can I get a sequel, please? Or a dozen? 

Jack Walcott is my absolute favorite of the Wayward Children, so I was happy to read more about her experience in the Moors. The content of the story was as lovely and haunting as I expected. It was great to get all these new details about the Moors and Dr. Bleak's backstory. However, this was probably the first time I felt a disconnect with Seanan McGuire's prose. I'm not entirely sure what made it hard to parse. Most likely the fact that every other sentence seemed way too long?

 

Such a beautiful and important short read. I love the diversity and intersectionality in Xan West's writing, and I absolutely fell in love with the characters here: their personalities, their relationship, the non-sexual D/s dynamic, the subtle inclusion of magic.

Essentially, this is a small snapshots in the lives of the main couple as they go through a misunderstanding and talk it out. Nothing big, and at the same time, something huge. There are so many themes interwoven here: internalized ableism, the issues disabled people in relationships can encounter (and solve!), nuanced and relatable depiction of nonbinary/genderfluid experience. A lot of it is just so familiar, and I felt incredibly, overwhelmingly seen while reading this story.

Also, all the descriptions? Just wow. Especially the food ones: mouth-watering doesn't begin to cover it. I'm actually kind of hungry right now. :)