Remarkably simple fantasy romance with knights, horses, animal companions, disgusting villains, and mleh ending
I couldn’t stop thinking that this book held striking resemblance to something I would write when I was about 13-15 y.o. It ticked all those points – a heroine with magic power related to horses, a handsome knight on a black horse, an instant romance with the aforementioned knight, a group of overly protective and honorable warriors with animal companions, etc. Unfortunately though, the villains in this book were a bit too villain-y and disgusting in the beginning, and then were thrown away in a mangled and abrupt ending in a rather disappointing way. For an ending like this, I really don’t see a point for building up the resentment towards them as much as it was built up. Another point would be that the heroine could do with a bit more brains (as usual). I literally couldn’t stand the way she behaved and acted in last few chapters. I think, that even for a silly fairy tale (with sex) for girls this book had some promise, until about 70% in, when it suddenly flew off the hinges and the plot was washed down the toilet.
A healthy fantasy romance to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
A easy ‘comfort book’ through and through, with a handsome and overprotective warlord, likable side characters (also very protective), a ‘stubborn healer archetype’ heroine, a healthy relationship (admittedly, an ‘insta’ one, though), and grand gestures. Nothing else to say really. A good romantic read to put some balm on your soul and get away, without having to read about much angst and intrigues.
An interesting concept of an urban fantasy with a twist, yet unfocused.
I wanted to like this book a bit more. The thing is, I do like the world, the concept, and a lot of its characters. I just kind of feel that the focus was not in the right places for a lot of the story, especially the second half. I would have thought Meg (and hopefully Simon) were supposed to be the main character in this, but after the first initial chapters we don’t really get any substantial focus on the development of their relationships, just snippets here and there. I, personally, wish that the bit about Asia could have been left out altogether, and we could have had more time with Meg and Simon. A lot of their interactions get of ‘looking back’ treatment, when we don’t actually get to read about them happening, but get told that they had happened because one or another character was remembering them happen for a brief moment. It’s like the parts that were supposed to be more interesting were left out or breezed over, and boring insignificant parts about characters who didn’t even matter in slightest got a lot of focus and ‘screen time’. Regarding the world-building: While there probably could have been a better name than ‘Others’ (and why do we even need the word ‘Others’ if there is a proper name?), I sort of like the more savage concept for the ‘supernaturals’ that were something that have been around long before humans, and will always be more powerful than humans they can feed on. Can’t say if the concept had been really developed believably from all angles, but I think I just like it enough to kind of believe it without looking for holes much. The concept of blood prophets on the other hand… Definitely had more holes than substance, and was also left out of focus half-way through. I believe it will probably be revisited in one of the following books, but right now it feels more like just a convenient way to make the main character more special and let her predict things from time to time an be useful.
Returning to my very first point, (I just can’t really get over it) I feel that the most interesting parts were the interactions between Meg, Simon, Wolves, and some other supernaturals, but unfortunately they were too diluted by others and felt even more few and far between than they probably were. With the progression of the story, we got less and less insight into Meg and her actions, and it felt like we were getting farther and farther away from her. I think I’m still interested enough to read book 2, but if it will follow the same pattern – of focusing on insignificant side characters and not on the developments between the main characters – that probable will be ‘it’ for me.
Finally got to these series, one could say. I enjoyed it, but it felt a bit too tightly packed for my tastes. In fact, it was so action-packed I feel like it just flew by too quickly for me to form a full opinion on this. (Maybe I shouldn’t have read it in less than 2 days) But for such a short book, not only the action feels to be happening non-stop, with no time to breathe, we get introduced one after another to various wolves, witches, gremlins, vampires, gay lawyers… There are all these people in their stories and politics and concepts that keep piling and piling on top of each other, and it gets a little overwhelming. I like that there are so many thought-through details and branches, but I feel like this book would be a bit more enjoyable if we could slow down and linger on some things. Let the world-building settle in. Develop relationships some more. Get a better feel for some characters. Feels a bit too much like a drama episode made after a novel, where all the extra story ‘juice’ that makes novel a novel was sucked out and only the indispensableness bones and meat were left to make sure no action-movie lover could have a chance to feel bored even for a second. It’s hard to find a specific flaw in this, but there’s this feeling of ‘under-satisfaction’, of something missing, that leaves me with this cautious feeling of ‘I’ll get the next one and we’ll see’, instead of ‘I want the whole series right now!’ I was hoping for.
but I’m also already stressing out about the fact that I only brought 4 books with me to last me 2 weeks, none of them of the same series, and I’ve already almost finished one of them on the day 0 (on the plane).
And this is not a country where I could just go online and get the books I want delivered next day. They don’t even have Amazon here…
I also, apparently, choose stressing out and suffering without the books I want, to just buing them on my kindle. I just can’t make myself do it, even though I could just buy all the books of the series I want to continue reading right now, and it would be like 3 times cheaper than waiting before I return to Japan and order paper copies. This is so irrational I kind of want to smack myself, but feel like it still wouldn’t help.
Heh… I was ready to give this book 4 stars, call it ‘a comfort book you read to get your mind away from your shit’, rant a little about its main character, and leave it at that… Until the very last chapters. The ending, unfortunately, made me take off at least 0.5 more stars and gave me a whole another topic to rant on. First of all, this book is still a ‘comfort book’ (like comfort food), where instead of a fairy god mother you get a handsome fae king with tattoos and rock band t-shirts to save you from your horrors and take you to a ball (and I’m sure many would prefer it this way). The only negative thing I can say about the character of Bargainer is that his ‘bad side’ was not entirely realistic, developed, or believable. From all the things he says and does, nothing really screams ‘dangerous and ruthless asshole’ other than the main character’s insistence that he is. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Even though I’m not really a fan of fairies and wouldn’t say that his ‘type’ is a one I personally would usually be attracted too (except for the fashion), the Bargainer is easy to understand, like, and emphasize with. The main character, however, is another story all together. Unfortunately, she does not escape the curse of female characters of romance literature you just want to throttle for her behavior from time to time. She is not the worst case, and is still tolerable, I can give you that, but with the progression of the story it becomes increasingly difficult to find anything to like about her, or any reason the Bargainer would like her this much. Except for the fact that she’s supposed to be very pretty… Which is just… no. She is a coward unless she uses her supernatural powers, she is self-centered, manipulative, and can’t make up her mind and refuses to listen or understand the man she claims she loves. It actually feels pretty strange, because, as readers, we see everything through her POV, but she sort of acts as a mindless conductor a lot of time, passing on the things that make a lot of things very clear to us readers, while she herself acts like she sees and hears them, but refuses to comprehend any of their meanings. It get’s rather frustrating to read their interactions with the Bargainer where he is making his intentions pretty clear all along, and she keeps to her song of ‘he never liked me and he will be cruel, and I shouldn’t like him’ that makes absolutely 0 sense. What really got me, is the part where the whole ‘twist’ (if we can even call it that, because it’s actually very strange and confusing, and I don’t really get why we needed it) is revealed, and she is so focused on her feelings she doesn’t even bother to apologize for all the shit she did and for her behavior. She’s just too happy for herself to think about how the other party feels. In general, it feels like the main character never really bothers to actually listen to her ‘partner’ and try to see things from his point of view, she is always too busy caring only about herself… and it doesn’t feel nice at all. Speaking of making 0 sense, there is the whole ‘main villain’ story part. While I’m aware that there’s probably more explanation in the following books, at the moment my impression is that the whole story line was pulled out of nowhere and flushed down the toiled. a) It makes absolutely no sense that it was going on for so many years on the scale that it was supposedly going on and no one managed to uncover or stop it; b) We are pretty much told that the Bargainer should have realized exactly who was behind the whole thing the very first time he brought the main character to his world – which brings us to c) it makes absolutely no sense that it took him so much time to find them since she actually told him how the man looked and he said he recognized him all that time ago. Also, since he was supposed to be able to trace her location using the beads. There are more things that make very little sense about it, but I don’t really want to go into details and spoilers. The whole ending sequence just felt random, confusing, and unbelievable… unfortunately.
Another negative point that I can’t help but mention is that the only two other real characters (the best friend and the ex-boyfriend) were treated terribly, and until the very last time they both make appearances were nothing but annoying nuisances written in a rather unpleasant light. Very much like with the Bargainer’s background, we get nothing but tiny vague hints about them, and no real character development. Which, I guess, sort of makes sense if we take into account the fact that we see the world through a main character who isn’t really interested in anyone but herself…
I’m planning to read the sequel once I get it, and I’m hoping to see a number of things there: to get more deeper information and more developed background story for the Bargainer, not just vague hints; less selfishness from the main character; a resolution to the ‘villain plot line’ that will actually make sense; some other actually properly developed characters that don’d add angst; less confusion and needless angst in general.
This book kept me apprehensive for a good half of it. Chiefly because there’s hardly anything I really really hate to read about more than people who get off on torturing and humiliating others. And in the beginning of this book, there is enough of that for a few. There’s torture, slavery, rape, humiliation, murder, people being burned alive and generally treated like worthless dirt left and right. It was pretty difficult to get through, to be honest. Since I was going into this blind (I got this book through a subscription box and have never read anything by this author before), and with a beginning like that, I sat ready to throw this book as far as I can at any signs of more gruesome rape and gore following. And while the gore is still there, I was pleasantly surprised by many choices the author made going forward. This book reminded me that I must be still a girl deep inside, because it is, let us be honest, chiefly a romance before all else, and it got into my head like I never expected it to. It gave me a lot of anxiety, and got into my dreams. I honestly couldn’t stop thinking about it. The main characters are very easy to like. I can hardly remember the last I found main characters as easy to like and understand as these two. They are not stupid, they are not annoying, they are not arrogant, or closed-minded, and, while they do make questionable decisions, they don’t act like self-centered idiots who constantly need to establish dominance over each other, and I really can’t stress enough how much I appreciate this. I do think the writing has a few issues. The switching between POVs was sometimes hard to follow, and time was swallowed in strange ways. And I also wish there was a bit more to this book. The second half especially, felt a little rushed. I think this book could do with some more substance around its middle, definitely, because the world is there and it is interesting enough to be spread out a bit more around the romance and the main struggles of the main characters. I was planning to give this book 4 stars, even if mostly because first chapters were really unpleasant and I can’t in any honesty say I loved it while those chapters are still in this book, but I’m actually going to be sappy and add an extra star just for the ending. Because thank you for not crashing us.
P.S. I also not sure I actually want to read a sequel to this… Because, wile I definitely would want more of this book, I definitely don’t want any more shit to happen to these two. And I also really didn’t want that thing who we all know shouldn’t have survived this book to survive… and since it did, it’s easy to predict that if there will be a sequel, it most likely will feature its revenge and… I really don’t want to read about any more things that thing might do to make the lives of these characters (and all beings in general) miserable. Let’s just leave them with the ending we’ve got… (If we could have a book that was about these characters without any more disturbing terrible things happening to them and around them, now I would read the shit out of that.)
Started reading medieval history books and now I want to have a book on every person (ok, every monarch, I can be reasonable) I’m interested in and can’t believe they don’t exist. If I can have a great book on Edward I, why can’t I have a similarly detailed on his failure of a son (Edward II) or the French king if the same age (Philip IV the Fair (a.k.a. the Iron King)? Once you read 400 pages of witty and clever tale in tiny font, encyclopaedia articles just don’t do it anymore…
on
Imagine how cool it would be if the time would stop for reading. And you could read as much as you want and it just would not count as ‘spending time’.
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fandom goods therapy shopping
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One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted – One need not be a House – …
DNFed. Twice. First time, I dropped it around chapter 4. The writing just felt terrible, I kept stumbling over it and going back to frown at it every few paragraphs. I wanted to scream that nespresso is the cheapest espresso machine there is (I checked UK Amazon later and saw that while it’s true for my country, they’re pretty expensive in UK and let it go) and the idea that the main character was from Slovakia was pulled in by the ears and then was not represented in any way in the rest of the text at all (not that I even finished the book, so maybe I’m wrong, but in the parts I did read it certainly didn’t have any sense for her to be from Slovakia). So I thought that was it, but then when I went to goodreads and took a look if people felt the same, I was surprised to see so many positive reviews. So I thought maybe I should give it a second chance and tried again. And it really didn’t get any better. Very soon I realized that the author was simply trying to write it like describing a cheap-ish detective drama, exactly the way you’d see things on the tv. It is full of clichés, none of them pleasant or nostalgic. Sexism, racism, psychopathic narcissists, closed-minded superiors, words ‘gay bashing’ dropping left and right… Detective Moss (almost Morse) and Dr. Strong (no comment). The interludes about the culprit – the very first chapter, the chat room, the part where the author actually tries to explain the whole psychology behind the murders in the very beginning of the book and then pretend like he didn’t – felt repulsive. Every few pages I’d come across some line of dialog or description that would make my hair stand up, and then it got to a point that this book was getting me angrier about my actual work of proofreading and editing texts, and I decided that there is no reason to torture myself any further if this book and me are clearly not made for each other. And judging by the reviews, I’m not missing much about the story either.
My brain likes very much to form some curios sensory memory pathways (while often vigorously refusing to form most procedural ones). Usually, because I almost constantly ‘do something while doing something else’, some kind of random association will cement itself in my mind. I will remember in every detail what kind of soup I ate while playing at what place in what game and while watching what movie some 15 years ago every time I eat that soup, or remember that game or movie. I will strongly associate a certain episode from a show with a certain kind of candy I ate while watching it for the nth time. Or a song with a specific chapter in a book and a memory of a stranger’s apartment or a hotel room. I have a specific perfume of mine I now associate firmly with Bloodborne. This is significant for me because I have memory problems and usually remember shit about my own life, unless I happen to smell something that will bring me back to some place in the past. Or like the only New Years Eve from ages 0-14 that I can remember is the one when there was Die Hard on the tv while we were getting ready to go out. The thing is, for more than a year now I keep reading fanfiction on certain set of characters (don’t ask me why I refuse to say ‘fandom'(not only because I misspelled is as ‘famdom’ before)) for an hour every night before I sleep and every morning after waking up (because it’s short, I can check tags, and it’s written by many different people with many different bats in the belfry perspectives), and after first few months it reached that point where I start to feel like stepping into the world of those characters the second I walk into my own bedroom. Which opens some interesting writing possibilities… if I had any more freedom about what I can read and when.
Incidentally, this is also the only routine I’ve been able to keep for this long. Or for any significant amount of time, really.
Keina Daria 