Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Mostly dark, woman-hating, and sexual in a decidedly unpleasant way fae-themed urban fantasy.

While the language itself was not unpleasant and there were enough of interesting turns of phrases and stylistic choices that could have made this book a bit above average writing-wise, the story content and details made it feel rather cheap.
The things the main character focused on (pink nail polish, hair, clothing, expensive cars) and the descriptions of the main character in her own words (overly emphasized attractive qualities, sometimes unrealistic, and the ‘I could never become ugly’ approach); the fact that sex is only present as a weapon of humiliation and death (and scenes with V’lane were so cringy I practically had to skip them); the fact that there is not a single positive character in the whole book (women who are alive are other bitches or brainless trophies, men are either villains or just bullies; every single person tries to walk over others)…
I haven’t read many books with this kind of ‘recounting’ (looking back approach) style of narration, but I have to say I really don’t like it. As in, saying: “Before long, I would understand that nothing had been what it seemed that night, and the reason … was not…” and then doing nothing to explain what it actually was. I don’t know if someone who thinks they know all about writing said that this is a good technique to use to keep readers interested, personally I find it nothing but annoying. If you’re not going to say what it is just don’t say it…
Since there hardly was anything pleasant or positive/attractive in the whole book, for me this was a kind of book I just couldn’t get done and over with soon enough… A tiring experience.



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The Mortal Word by Genevieve Cogman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Imaginative and unique, but dry and overwhelmingly political.
The most powerful impressions I had while reading this were ‘too much’ and ‘too dry’.
On one hand, it speaks of the author’s powers of imagination and detail control, on the other… Too many characters, too many of whom are absolutely sure they are the most important and right beings in the universe, too many things happening and trying to pull the blanket in all directions at the same time, etc… In fact, the book is actually rather self-aware that there is ‘too much going on’, and it tries to address it by having the main character constantly remind herself or others of ‘all things that are going on and are at stake’ time after time, but instead of helping reader to re-focus it only makes the text even more cluttered and repetitive. Most of the conversations are highly manipulative and tiring. And very often repeating practically the same dynamic but with multiple different characters.
There is very little, if any, excitement or enjoyment in this.
With politics taking most of the focus, human relationships in turn turn very dry. There might have been a romantic element, but the way the main character is so very distant and uninterested towards it, it’s practically not there.
Finally, the whole complexity of things might have been justified if the culmination was shocking or surprising at all… But in reality, we actually get hinted very heavily at the culprit at the very beginning of the book, and then have to go through all those tedious events just to reach the conclusion we foresaw from the very beginning…



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