aphrael's reviews
717 reviews

I loved the mood of this book. Everyone has their own things to deal with, and they are all mostly just people doing their best. Hetta, the main character, cares a lot for her family even though she doesn't quite feel at home after being away for years. I wish we had seen more of her life before she went back, to get to know her a bit better, but on the other hand starting with the idea of a land-sense was very interesting. The prologue was much more dramatic than the rest of the book, but I kept wanting to read on. There was more mystery than drama, in fact a lot of drama was actively prevented by Hetta, for instance by actually talking about things. I find drama sure to misunderstanding a bit cheap sometimes, so I really appreciated that this book had very little of it. The romantic subplots were interesting without overshadowing the rest of the book, and I like how the playfulness with which Hetta approached romance fit very well with her character. 

Fairy tale inspired, but with some modern themes like

domestic violence

. At first I thought this would be one of those books that was macical and tried for beautiful and mysterious prose, but with characters that stay a bit superficial or distant. I was pleasantly surprised that it becamw more personal and relatable further into the book. While it still kept the simple heart of a fairy tale, the characters and scenes had a lot of life to them. The premisethat Marra started on a quest and gathered friends/compatriots around her just made the book more lovely and warm the further the story went. Bonedog was magical but also just a wonderful dog. Just such a really warm and lovely book, even if it's about

murder, something nobody seems to have a problem with

.

Pretty cool. I love the sense of family in this book.

Although I didn't expect it to turn romantic. Why is it that the romantic interests are always guys who are super powerful and seem to like the main character on first sight. That said, the way the main characters overcome their mistrust and feeling unsafe around each other is lovely.

I like how the main characters recognize and appreciate how much they each care for their family. It's a really short book but lovely.

Very interesting!

The main character is really capable but fucks up literally all the time, which is an interesting dynamic. Everyone seems to be a lesbian for some reason, it's statistically unlikely but ah well so is magic. 

I did relate to this book a lot, almost everyone means well but there's racism and colonialism and misunderstandings and just stuff happening that people don't have any way to change. It's messy, like real life, which means it's pretty relatable. 

It's very sweeping and intricate but the writer also knows how to make things very personal. It's reallhy well done. However, the story is so big that even though I do relate to the characters, I still have to think about who's who at times.

It's interesting that things got almost a bit religious, with a prophecy and a dragon death cult.

That might be my failing, but since it's so big and sweeping, I feel like it'll take a little time before I'm ready for another book in this series.

Ok I'm a bit over it now that Casteel seems so devoid of anything but worship for Poppy. The politics and the story about the gods and war between the two kingdoms is still interesting but the main characters aren't as interesting to me anymore.

Looking back over the whole series I really appreciate that feeling safe and things that seem weird are ok if it's what you want are such big parts of the book, even though the writer does seem to have to stress it a lot to make it actually like that. 

A vampire series that doesn't get gross in the second book, bravo! I do think there were some power imbalance things in this one but the story kept going and it's a very diverting read.

This book was well-written but seemed a bit caught between trying to update the story for current audiences and staying true to the original. The original story is grand and dramatic, and I appreciated the way the story was fleshed out while staying true to the original but I didn't really connect to the vengeful nature of the characters. As a drama I love it but it seemed to me that the project of the book was to make the characters relatable, and in this it failed for me.  I liked 'a thousand ships' by Natalie Haynes better mainly because it was a retelling without pretensions at a lot more. That said, I did enjoy Electra, just not as much as I hoped I would.

Interesting premise but maybe not great execution. The narrator is an alien who is sent here to find some information/assassinate people, and appears in the guise of a human who was disappeared earlier. The writing is very vivid, and the alien's account is written as if it's towards other aliens. This means that a lot of the information about what the aliens are like is written in either memories or 'oh you're an alien I don't have to tell you we do x' while still telling us that because in real life the writer is a human writing for humans. That kind of exposition gets real old real fast. I would have loved a scene at the start in the alien world or true flashbacks or something, rather than this kind of exposition. 

It's nice that the alien discovers emotions and compassion, but while the book is getting more relatable the further you get into it, the story still felt a bit distant to me. While the plot and the writing drew me in, I found it hard to keep interested and relate to the characters.