FIVE BROKEN BLADES was the cheesy fantasy-fest that was exactly what I needed to get out of my reading slump and big heaping thanks to my friend, who bought me the "special edition" version with the sprayed edges. I feel like the best way to describe this book is that it's Asian-inspired fantasy with a fast-paced heist vibe reminiscent of One Piece or Blue Eye Samurai. In the author's note, it kind of sounded like the author wrote this book as a way of reconnecting with her Korean heritage, and I thought that was neat.
This book had SO MANY POVs, though. It took me forever to get used to all the head-hopping, especially since the chapters were so short. There's Royo, an assassin for hire (he kind of reminded me of Roronoa Zoro); Sora, a female assassin whose body is made out of poison (think Poison Ivy crossed with Cat Woman); Aeri, a ditzy thief with a dark secret (I was kind of picturing her as Saint Tail but older); Mikail, a jaded assassin; Euyn, a spoiled and indolent younger prince now on the run for his life; and Ty, a spymaster and son of a count.
The world building was pretty easy to understand and there were some nice adornments that made it feel unique, although I sometimes found myself wishing for more details. Part of my frustration with the short chapters and multi-POV format is that it made the book feel very choppy at times, and the author seemed to feel the need to end each chapter with a cliffhanger that sometimes felt a little bit like getting slapped in the face. Especially if we were at a part of the book that I thought was interesting and wanted to hear more about. The premise was great though-- who doesn't want to hear about a bunch of down-on-their-luck iconoclasts who want to hunt down and kill a god king? Especially when their summons come semi-anonymously, locked-room-mystery style. You know there's sus-nanigans afoot.
I think if you go into this book expecting really detailed world-building, you might be disappointed. It's also not as spicy or romance-heavy as FOURTH WING, despite being from the same publisher. Most of the sex scenes in here were vague or fade-to-black. I think it would be appropriate for older teens and would probably classify this as new adult, since the characters were in their early twenties. This is costume fantasy, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, as long as you're just looking for something escapist and not something semi-literary to be snobby about. And there were some great twists at the end! So I would definitely consider reading more from this author.
I almost preordered this as soon as they dropped the cover and the gorgeous sprayed edges, because I loved THE FOURTH WING, and I figured that they had gone out and acquired a bunch of really similar stories to chase the smashing success of the dragon romantasy series. Plus, I saw some early reviews comparing this to THE NIGHT CIRCUS meets Avatar: The Last Airbender and someone (a liar, as it turns out) put it on a list of WUTHERING HEIGHTS retellings. So the marketing was marketing, and I was ready to be obsessed...
...Except, for a hyped-up fantasy romance from a BIG publisher with a successful release, this had incredibly mixed advance reviews.
So I didn't preorder and basically was only tangentially aware of this book's existence as a pretty cover in my orbit housing a book that I might or might not want to read-- until one of my friends bought it for me as an early birthday present. Now that I've read it, I'm both surprised and also not surprised that it did so badly with its audience, because this feels like it's trying very hard to emulate Sarah J. Maas: it's got a bat boy shadow daddy, everyone purrs with pleasure and rolls their shoulders, and the smut smuts like a 1980s bodice-ripper that's got Fabio on the cover. SJM might not be my taste, but she's very popular, and I'm kind of surprised her fans weren't more into this, especially the HOUSE OF BREATH AND BLOOD people.
I personally felt like the world-building was way too shallow. I didn't understand how these various Elementals were really tied to their elements and why they looked the way they did, and I felt like the big war between the feuding queens was seriously underplayed, especially since it's partially responsible for the main conflict of the book. Every time there is a big conflict, it's resolved almost instantly, which doesn't feel interesting and didn't leave me feeling very invested. Also, the heroine tells the hero she loves him after five days, two of which he is in a cage, barely talking and suffering from amnesia, and I think the remaining three, they're just banging nonstop (over three fairly long chapters). I was kind of surprised, since it didn't seem like they had much chemistry and I seem to recall that his soul was compared to a child's because it was so pure and empty, so that was weird and a little uncomfy. I feel like the author was trying to subvert the trope of experienced man/naive and childlike woman by reversing the genders, and in that sense, I get what she was trying to do, but I don't like that trope between an EM and N&CW, and I didn't like it with an EW and a N&CM.
Overall, this kind of ended up being a disappointment for me, which makes me sad because I really wanted to love it and be this book's champion, because I often feel like when a book has a Goodreads average rating this low, that usually means they weren't able to find their target audience. That still might be the case, because, like I said, this really had strong HOUSE OF BREATH AND BLOOD vibes, if it were written as one of those fantasy Harlequins, so I think if you read it as a cheesy romance with the understanding that the world-building and fantasy elements are mostly just window dressing, you'll probably like it more than people who picked it up expecting another FOURTH WING.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT is a sapphic Greek myth about Limos, the goddess of famine, and Demeter, the goddess of harvest. Long ago, the Fates decreed that they should never meet, because their powers were great enough, and diametrically opposed enough, that they could be responsible for one another's destruction.
Limos is obsessed with the specter Demeter plays in her life. When people approach her to bargain, she is always second best. When a poor farmer has a poor harvest, he turns to Limos to spite his competitors. She is used as a weapon against people, an instrument of suffering. One day, Demeter comes to her, asking her to do the same.
I thought this was a great tale of obsession, with two morally grey women who are too powerful to be controlled. It really did feel like one of the Greek myth stories I used to read in my copy of D'Aulaires as a kid, especially with what happened to the king who was foolish enough to kill one of Demeter's favorites in this book. Truly chilling.
What a great short story. I hope she writes a novel.
I bought this book because of a teaser I saw the author post on Threads that made me think this was going to be a really twisted dark romance with dub con (MY FAVORITE). It wasn't quite that, but I loved it anyway. SONG OF THE DEMON COURT ended up being an examination of personal faith, an enemies to lovers romance with high stakes, and a pretty interesting character portrait of two flawed and damaged people slowly learning to trust each other-- all with a Jareth-coded hero framed within an erotic pied piper retelling. WHAT.
Annika lives in what I believe is medieval Bavaria. The children in town are dying of a plague and the council have called upon a mythic race (kind of like demon elves?) called the pipers to cure the children with enchanted song. However, they cannot afford to pay the price and they know it. But because The Men(TM) are stupid and stubborn, they go ahead with the plan anyway, and the pipers decide to take the children away as punishment.
Annika alone goes to the kingdom of Laute to get the children back. Instead of forking them over, Loic, the son of the king, agrees that she can look them over as a sort of nanny in exchange for being his plaything. Disgusted, Annika agrees, and is then surprised when he proceeds to mostly not touch her. She came to this kingdom playing a game of her own, but it seems like Loic is playing one, too. And the stakes have never been higher.
So this was a really fun read. I loved that Annika was a single mom and her body wasn't perfect. She was brave but made stupid decisions, which, don't we all. I never disagreed with or failed to understand anything that she did, though. Loic on the other hand is a true morally grey character. He reminds me a lot of some of Anne Stuart's heroes, particularly the one in PRINCE OF MAGIC. Towards the end, he did a lot of things that were hard to like, since he wasn't truly a villain character, but you know what they say: hurt people hurt people. He was basically the fantasy equivalent of that. AND OH MY GOD, the author makes him suffer. This is a man who is put through hell for his cruelty, and has to really grovel to get his HEA. I actually felt so sorry for him by the end.
The world building was SO detailed and creative and I thought the writing was beautiful. I was surprised by the heavy religious themes. I'm not religious at all but I thought they added to the medieval setting in a really rich and authentic way. THE LAST HOUR OF GANN was similar, especially in how the hero's faith was tested and challenged, and I loved that book as well. I think it's thematically relevant to a lot of people. But the way the heroine is judged and internalizes some of her teachings to her own detriment might be hard to read for people who have experienced religious abuse/trauma.
ALSO I loved how sign language was so casually and cleverly integrated into the plot. That rep is unusual and shouldn't be, so it was especially great to see here.
Apparently there's a sequel coming out and I will definitely be first in line for it!
THE SAFETY OF UNKNOWN CITIES was recommended in this erotic horror thread I sometimes hang out in. The comparisons to Clive Barker both intrigued and terrified me because Barker is a fantastic author, but his stuff definitely pushes the limits of what I can handle. This book is a lot like the Hellraiser series, especially with the hedonistic sex addict heroine, Val, who fucks the way other people do hits of morphine; she needs greater and greater extremes to get the same highs, but it's never enough.
That's why she's searching for this place called The City. It's a place so terrifying that some people would rather blind themselves than see it-- unless you're a pervy weirdo, and then it's heaven on earth, where no sex act, no matter how depraved, is disallowed. Val goes all the way to the middle east with an intersex man who is also her lover, who holds the secret to The City over her head to toy with her.
But Val isn't the only one looking for The City. Breen, Val's ex lover and a serial killer-slash-sadist, is now looking for it, too.
I knew this book was going to be hardcore because it literally opens up with a graphic eye-gouging scene. It only goes downhill from there. I felt really uncomfortable reading this book and as with other readers, it made me feel a little physically ill. I found myself comparing it to THE HELLBOUND HEART, which was also about pleasure taken to wildly horrific extremes, but in that book, Barker left a lot of the horror to the reader's imagination. Here, Taylor feels the need to lay it all out, and the end result of that is that all of the body horror just gets stacked up on top of each other, until by the end of the book, you're asking yourself both what the point of it all was, and when it would end.
I skimmed to the end because I wanted to see if the characters made it out okay. None of them were particularly likable but with a book like this, it's kind of nice to know who-- if anyone-- makes it out alive. One of my favorite characters in the book got a pretty raw deal, so that was a bit of a bummer. Not sure I'd recommend this to anyone but readers of the extreme horror genre.
Not for me. I couldn't get into the writing style and I'm not really a fan of the insta-love trope. Story-wise, this feels like a three-way cross between FOURTH WING, HUNGER GAMES, and Ilona Andrews's Hidden Legacy series, with a sprinkling of Rhysand's "darling" thrown in for good fun. I can see why this is popular because it is basically catering to every popular trope in the YA/NA fantasy market. It just feels a little... flat, for me, personally.
Perfection, thy name is Ann Aguirre. MIRROR, MIRROR is a spicy feminist fairytale that turns the wicked stepmother trope on its head. Trude has been in love with Viggo since they were children, and he used to love her too, until he fell for their friend, Lisabet, instead, and the other cruel, beautiful little girl stole him away for good.
But when Lisabet dies, Viggo marries Trude. And when she comes home to the man she has been in love with her whole life and his beautiful lonely young daughter, it seems as if she's finally getting the family she has always longed for. Dreams really do come true.
Except... Viggo holds her at a distance, sleeping with her-- sometimes using her roughly-- but never telling her that he loves her. And Albie, the daughter, is babyish and cunning, affectionate one minute and oddly cruel the next. And then, the mirror arrives...
I just loved this book from start to finish. The lush prose, the slow pacing, the build-up of the household and how it was expanded into a claustrophobic, creepy little world, and the quiet, loving strength of the heroine. It was all magnificently done. I read the first book in this series of standalones, BITTERBURN, and liked it, but didn't love it. That book walked so this book could fucking fly, and the little call-out to the previous book was so well done.
Honestly, no notes. Between this and THE THIRD MRS. DURST, Aguirre kills it at fairytale retellings and gothic romances. It looks like there was supposed to be a third book in this trilogy, a standalone Bluebeard retelling (gender-swapped! OMG!) but it seems as if it might have been dropped. That's heartbreaking if true. I know that her witchy books are her best-sellers right now, so I get why she's attending to those, but I'm also praying to every god I know that she'll write another fairytale.
WITH SHIELD AND INK AND BONE was a Stuff Your Kindle selection. As soon as I found out it was about vikings, I was like, "Done and done." The beginning is super good and highly action-packed, starting with Liv's initial trauma and how it turned her into an instrument of a gods. For a while, I thought this was going to be a five-star read, but I feel like it has a pacing issue. The middle and end of this book drag, moving so slowly that it loses the momentum it built from the beginning and actually becomes a little boring in places (I'm sorry).
I also would not consider this book a fantasy romance. It is more of a straightforward older YA fantasy with romance elements. I only bring this up because it was in the romance SYK list, and the actual love interest doesn't come into play for a long while (at least after a quarter in). Most of the focus on the book is as Liv's development as a shield maiden avenging the murder of her loved ones. So I actually think this would be a great starting point for people who prefer straight fantasy and are just getting into romantasy as a genre because it feels like a nice stepping stone between fantasy fantasy and romance fantasy.
Overall, though, I quite enjoyed this book. The writing is strong, the hero is swoony (and ever the gentleman) and kind of gives off the same "I trust you to be strong in your own right as a woman because I am totally confident in my ability to respect the shit out of you" vibes as Peeta from the Hunger Games. It also felt quite well researched and I liked the blend of historical and fantasy. I'm definitely going to check out more from this author-- she's fantastic.
This is one of my favorite YA titles I've read this year. I actually don't really like horror that much, but apparently I do like horror as long as it's folk horror and the dog doesn't die. WHAT WE HARVEST is a gorgeous, lyrical novel about four magical founding farming families: one of them raises red horses and dogs, one ghost melons that glow in the dark, one glittering golden yams, and the last, a field of rainbow wheat that each has its own distinct flavor.
For years, they've been the toast of the farming community, world-renowned and celebrated, but Hollow's End holds a dark secret. A mysterious quicksilver blight has overtaken the crops and whatever it touches doesn't come back the same. Strange animals watch from the woods with glowing white eyes, tinged by rot. If Wren and her family can't figure out how to hold the blight at bay, their farm and their loved ones will all fall into corrupt and blackened ruin.
I loved this book so much. There were things about it that pushed my suspension of disbelief a little, but the story was so good that I didn't care. It has all the elements I love: magic-realism, dark family secrets, childhood friends to lovers, angst, sinister rituals, and high stakes danger. Some YA feels like it's pandering to the parents, rather than its teen readers, but this book was beautifully teen, whether it was the wistful longings for adulthood, or the mistakes we make while impetuously trying to be adults.
I can't wait to read more from this author. This was an INCREDIBLE debut.
I'm still slowly working my way through the last two Stuff Your Kindle cycles. THE FAE'S BRIDE is a cute, low-stakes palate cleanser of a book that's set in a fantasy version of Italy called Zamerra. It's a little like Little Women meets Princess Bride meets ACOTAR. I think this is a romance for adults but it's very low spice, so I think it would be fine for young adults, too. I liked Alessia just fine and even though I wasn't a fan of Massimo's name, it was refreshing to read about a romantic lead who was kind of introverted, enjoying cats, coffee, and solitude.
The only reason this isn't getting a higher rating is because it fell a little flat. I would have liked more chemistry between the leads, and I wish that everything had been fleshed out a little more than it was. It's a very charming universe that the author has created and I'm excited to read the next book in the series the next time I read something heavy and want to take a break with something that's pure fluffy goodness.
MAGIC UNDER GLASS was on a list of Jane Eyre retellings, which I was a little skeptical about at first because when I read the summary, it didn't sound very Jane Eyre-y.
This is the story of a girl named Nimira, who comes from a Pan Asian-inspired country that mostly seems to be Indian-inspired but has flavors from some other countries, too. She is a dancer, and even though dancing is well respected where she comes from, it's considered pretty base and deplorable in the England-inspired asshole country where she resides now.
One day, a man steals her away from her low-paying job with the offer of a more private performance. He has an automaton that his previous dancing girls thought was haunted and wants a living human girl to perform alongside it at parties. In exchange, she also gets room and board. It seems like a pretty sweet deal and obviously she takes it, because the boss that she has now is a total creep.
But as soon as she gets to the house, she starts noticing weird stuff. The servant girls are oddly frightened, and there's strange rumors about her new employer, Hollin's, dead wife. And the automaton that she's supposed to dance with seems like it might be alive after all... and in desperate need of help.
Reviews for this book are mixed, which both surprises me and not. The original cover for this book made it seem like this was going to be a very light romantasy for girls, when actually, this book has a lot of really dark themes like colonialism, orientalism, racism, political corruption, and capitalist greed. Most of these themes are actually handled pretty well, including the orientalism + racism, although I am guessing that maybe some readers looking for lighter fare got pissed that the subjects got so heavy.
This also really isn't a romance in the usual sense. Nimira is very strong but all the men around her are very weak: morally, in their convictions, or physically. She is the savior, and even the nicest love interest (who is very cinnamon roll-like) isn't able to protect her or court her in the usual way. Nimira plays the active role that is normally reserved for the hero, and people looking for traditional fantasy gender roles in their romances with "strong, swoonworthy heroes" probably wouldn't like this.
As for me, I like it when a story takes risks. This is more Jane Eyre-inspired than it is a direct retelling, but the gothic adjacent vibes are definitely there, and I liked that, too. I'd recommend this to readers of Gail Carson Levine and Diana Wynne Jones (the book comped itself to Libba Bray and Charlotte Bronte, but I think that was another mistake-- it's not really like either).
Whoa. Even though this was 200 pages shorter than ELFLAND, it felt twice as long. I think part of that beefiness is because ELFLAND is a more accessible story: beneath all the fantasy trappings and trimmings, it's a story of family drama, and an enemies-to-lovers story spun out over decades. MIDSUMMER NIGHT has some of that, too, but it's more bitter in terms of execution, and I feel like the author was reaching more, to make her concepts bigger, and larger-than-life.
In this book, we're again met with a pretty large cast of characters. Gill is a half-Indian/half-English woman who used to be a champion runner until she suffered an injury that left her with chronic, debilitating pain. She ends up going to an artist's commune for secret reasons, which is run by a woman named Dame Juliana, who makes these impressive, mythical mixed-media sculptures that are eerie and seem to be alive. A lot of other artists live with her and worship at her feet, including the mysterious Peta, who makes masks that are similarly alarming-looking.
The plot-- what little there is-- kicks off when Gill discovers a secret path into a township that shouldn't exist. A man she meets there escapes from it and ends up at the commune, causing a stir because he looks like a man who disappeared long ago. His appearance kicks up all this old dust about family secrets and feuds, the governing of magic, and-- of course-- the question as to whether the man desperately and ruthlessly searching for him is his concerned brother... or an ancient evil.
I liked MIDSUMMER NIGHT a lot but I think it's harder to like because it doesn't have the romance of the first book. There is romance in this book but it's few and far between and isn't always satisfying, so people seeking that out are going to be bitterly disappointed. I also feel like this book didn't always feel like it knew where it was going or what it wanted to be, hence why the pacing felt so off. Warrington is unquestionably a brilliant storyteller, though, and she especially likes to use colors to set or convey a scene, which works especially well in a book like this, where one of the motifs is expression of art.
I'm not sure whether I loved or hated some of the characters in here; all I know is I'll be picking this one out of my teeth for a while. It's definitely a book that stays with you, and causes a little bit of discomfort and anguish even after you have the satisfaction of finishing it in its entirety.
This book is one of TikTok's darlings and I can absolutely see the hype. That said, I didn't enjoy this book. The heroine is very much one of those brash, arrogant, not-like-other-girls heroines, popularized by authors such as Sarah J. Maas. Books like these used to make me feel annoyed but now I get that it's just a matter of personal preference and taste. The writing is very clean and flows pretty smoothly in a way that suggests that the author knows her craft. Some YA titles are bogged down by overly ornate purple prose; this one is not. I don't hate this book, I just kept setting it down and getting bored while reading it. If you enjoy Sarah J. Maas and FOURTH WING, you'll probably love this.
I just know this is going to end up as one of my favorite books of 2024. It is fantastic. I felt lukewarm about her earlier book, HOUSE OF SALT AND SORROW, but SMALL FAVORS takes everything I did like about that book and heightens it: strong and flawed heroine, culty and claustrophobic small town, folk horror, fairytale retellings, feminism, and the seductive lure of evil and danger.
In the town of Amity Falls, people live like frontier men and women, harvesting based on the season and going by wagon when they need bulk supplies. But something in the surrounding woods has changed. Animals come out and they don't look right. And there are whispers of creatures with silvery eyes.
Ellerie, our narrator, stands at the forefront of this tale. And when tragedy strikes, she finds herself forced not just as protector for her siblings but possibly bearing the burden of saving the entire town. If they even want to be saved, that is.
Evil is, after all, a most seductive mistress.
I am just blown away by how good this was. It's easy, I think, as an author to feel the need to handhold your younger audience when you write YA. But this book doesn't do that. I'm glad it wasn't an adult story because it was so intense that I think it would have actually been too much if it were more graphic. Craig deftly handles serious and disturbing themes that are probably, unfortunately, relatable to some members of her young audience: sexism, emotional abuse, religious abuse, gaslighting, hard choices regarding right vs. wrong, and the perils of first love. Ellerie is allowed to be selfish and flawed but it's clear from the get-go that she's a good person. I loved her so much and her growth over the book is as much as a coming of age tale as it is a hero's journey.
My only qualm is that I wish there had been an epilogue or something because the ending felt the teensiest bit abrupt and I was curious what ended up happening with the parents/baby.
I found this book while randomly hopping republished fantasy novels and I found the cover and the premise so charmingly '90s. Basically, this magical world is losing magical power, and in true Peter Pan fashion, one of the ways that magic enters their world is through the power of belief and imagination. The culprit? Television. So this ogre-cum-producer has decided to enlist the region's most powerful witch, Hali, to lead a bunch of Earthlings around their world while convincing them that they're playing a video game. Like I said, so. '90s.
Unfortunately, the premise quickly loses its charm. Apart from Hali, who does a good job playing the grumpy, maliciously complaint witch, all of the characters except Tracy are pretty unlikable. Leo, the overweight character, is fat-shamed throughout the book and he likes food guys, omg. Jamison, the asshole video game critic, is basically like Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park but without any of Goldblum's charm. And Oliver, the fratty gamer guy, is, well. A fratty gamer guy. Tracy is a teenage girl who comes along because she loves games, and of course all the guys mansplain fantasy and games to her at basically any opportunity.
WITCH AND WOMBAT is definitely dated, and this almost makes it charming. But I think what makes it un-fun to read is that it feels so joyless. None of the characters are particularly likable and since most of the book is a journey of them trekking and exploring this world, you're stuck with them. Character-driven stories only really work if the characters are likable or-- at least-- compelling. There are also a HUGE amount of typos in this book. I cut indie publications slack because I get it. That shit costs extra. But this book was once traditionally published. I'm not sure if this happened during the conversion or if this book had to be retypped or what, but the quality of proofreading was very poor.
This was a little like Piers Anthony's KILLOBYTE but better realized. So I think I would only recommend this to people who really, really like campy fantasy, even if it's dated.
As soon as I heard about UNCOMMONLY VERDANT, I knew I had to read it as one of my What the Actual Fuck Wednesday reads. Woman gets down and dirty with a plant man, with sus culty shenanigans? NEED. Disclaimer: I'm friends with the author but I paid for this book with my own hard-owned money and this is my honest review.
The book starts out pretty sad. Althea, the heroine, wakes up to find out that she was killed by the cultists in her town. They have decided that the portwine birthmark on her face signifies that she will be the destruction of their village, so they stabbed her in the heart and left her as a sacrifice for the forest guardian of the wood surrounding the village.
Silvanus, however, soon realizes that Althea did nothing wrong. Which is why he brought her back to life, stitching the wound over her heart closed and making it bloom with flowers. At first she's horrified by him and by her new state, but she quickly warms to the situation. After all, the forest is beautiful and Silvanus is a gentle soul.*
*Except when he isn't. :D
I'm happy to crown this a WtAFW success! A lot of these monsterica and niche erotica books aren't well written and are marketed more for the whimsy than they are for the quality of their writing. That is not the case with UNCOMMONLY, which is uncommonly well-written, with beautiful prose in places, and a surprisingly touching relationship for a book that is-- *stifles giggle*-- 69 pages in length.
This is one of the few books where I wish it was actually longer. I would have loved a full-length novel with these characters, showing Althea in the village, her sacrifice, and then maybe more of a courtship between her and Silvanus (who is a total gentleman monster and consent king(TM)). When he says that her birthmark is like a cherry tree after the rain? SWOON. And when he makes her little heart flower bloom with phlox because that's her favorite? DOUBLE SWOON. For what it is, it's wonderful. I'm definitely going to have to check out more of this author's work because this was great.**
**Even though there's no tree-dicks or tree-fucking.
Whenever a book gets this popular, I'm always kind of leery of starting it because I feel like it almost gets to a point where the book will never live up to the standards I've set for it in my mind. My toxic reader trait is that I build things up in my mind until they reach a point where nothing short of god can match them. But after weeks and weeks and weeks of being bombarded with it on Goodreads, TikTok, and Instagram, I finally decided to bite the bullet. I told everyone around me how much I wanted to read the book, and someone picked up the hint and got it for me for my birthday present.
I read it in literally two days.
This book is god.
God of keeping me up at night and forcing me to read about hot shadow men and dragons.
I chose not to perceive most of the reviews for this book because I didn't want to be spoiled, but I did glance at a few spoiler-free ones that were both positive and negative before asking for this book. FOURTH WING is a fantasy book but it's a fantasy book written by a romance author, and in an interview I saw with her on TikTok, she said she wanted to write a book for people who had trouble getting into fantasy. In that regard, I think it succeeds wildly. It was very, very easy to get into this book. Case in point: me finishing it in two days, on very little sleep.
FOURTH WING is basically a cross between Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, Mercedes Lackey's Joust, DIVERGENT, HUNGER GAMES, and VAMPIRE ACADEMY. Because of this, it feels almost nostalgic, even though it's contemporaneous. The language of the book is very modern so it isn't like a lot of high fantasy books, which tend to use very ornate and convoluted language. It is very easy to read and is written kind of like a young adult book, almost (although I'd put the target age demographic as probably new adult). Which means that it's accessible for young readers, but because the characters are older and the content is actually pretty sexual, older readers can enjoy it too without feeling weird.
I don't want to spoil too much because it's better going in cold, but I actually really loved this book. It's compulsively readable, and even though the heroine is a bit of a Mary Sue (seriously, two-toned hair and, like, super special powers? she's basically the posterchild), I liked that the author gave her real struggles in the form of chronic pain/long-term disability and a very real sense of being out of her element and having to struggle to achieve physical feats when all of her strength lies in book-learning. This rounded her out as a character. It's also a very feminist story. Sometimes the heroine does break the fourth wall (fourth wing, fourth wall, get it?), and it can come off as cheesy, but her perspective serves as a nice counterpoint for the borderline villainous hero, who despite being a couple years older than her, is often put in his place by her, so the relationship doesn't come across as being unequal.
FOURTH WING also subverts a lot of other tired tropes. The heroine isn't a virgin and says several times that she enjoys sex. Her best friend is queer and has an on-page relationship and the author doesn't bury her gays. It's very casual and the heroine teases her about her relationship the same way she teases the straight characters. Also, even though this is a military academy where the students are basically supposed to Hunger Games each other to get control of dragons, none of the violence that Violet faces from her attackers is ever sexual. I don't personally mind that in a story about bullying where it's obviously toxic, but I know it bothers a lot of people, and it's notably absent here.
But the biggest selling point for me? DRAGONS. I am still a ten-year-old girl at heart, okay? If a book has dragons OR unicorns in it, I will come running. As soon as I found out that this was a romantic fantasy book about a girl who bonds with dragons and has an enemies-to-lovers relationship with a morally grey hero, I basically fell over myself adding it to my to-read pile.
On a closing note, I feel like in the book community, there can be an almost hipster mentality where a popular book is seen as "selling out" or "too commercial," and reviewers feel a lot of pressure to hate on it for clout, lest their intellectualism and credibility be called into question. I am not saying that all one-star reviewers all clout-chasers (and I have definitely been the odd one out when it comes to very popular books more times than I can count), but I do definitely see people who seem like they hate on these books precisely because they sell well and maybe aren't as safely literary as other tried-and-true choices in the book blogger canon. I think it's wrong to punish a book for being easy to read though, and I think it's even more wrong to mock or deride reviewers who actually enjoy these books. Is this Tolkien? No. But that's why I like it. Tolkien, to me, is like a chore. Reading books like that feels like an unpleasant mental exercise. This book is like eating an entire bag of potato chips. Addictive. Fun.
So if you have had trouble getting into the fantasy genre and you really enjoy romance novels, this might be the gateway drug that ends up sucking you in for good. I honestly felt so giddy after reading this, the way I did after reading THE HUNGER GAMES for the first time. It was so much fun to post status updates for this book and fangirl over it with other readers who also enjoy it, and to be a part of the hype for a popular book while it's popular, and be excited over the release of the sequel. (WHICH I TOTALLY ALREADY PREORDERED BY THE WAY.) I hope, if you pick this book up, that you feel the same way. Although if you don't like it, I'll also totally understand. (Sort of.)
THE PRINCE OF BROKEN TOYS was an impulse buy because my friend Heather (who I BRed this with) had mentioned it to me, and the preorder was 99-cents, and also because I liked the cover. The premise is very difficult to explain. The heroine, Seraphine, is a doll-princess who is considered to be the "sluttier" of the two sisters because she turns to flesh more than her more perfect and correct sister, Frostine, does. The hero, Luxure, is a horse-headed man who had all of the paint scraped off his face by an abusive master, baring him right down to the bone. When they meet, Seraphine takes him in and ends up going from his savior to his student as he indulges and encourages her "racy" dancing.
This book was so weird. Weird and creative. It kind of gave Tim Burton aesthetics, with a dash of The Nutcracker, and that creepy Filmation Pinocchio movie from the late 1980s, Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night. There's a scene in that movie that kind of reminded me of Luxure and his cruel and abusive ringmaster. Creepy. I swear, with movies like this and Rats of NIMH, the 80s seriously gave no fucks about who they traumatized.
But even though this book has some dark (more abusive and traumatic than gory) content, what it is more than anything is an excuse for some truly weird monsterotica.
I actually wasn't the biggest fan of this one just because I found it a little confusing and heavier on the erotica than the actual story, but I could appreciate the world-building. I also liked how "fleshing," or the process of puppets turning from material to flesh, sort of seemed to be an allegory for the demonstration of sexuality, and how Luxure and Seraphine both used their fleshing in their ways of coping with abuse: Luxure locked down and turned to wood (this felt like an allegory for how some abuse survivors go nonresponsive), whereas Seraphine became oversexualized (another coping mechanism, in an attempt to reclaim one's sexuality). The organic puppet strings, which in this book are sort of extensions for the soul, felt like an allegory for bodily autonomy; having people take your strings without your permission hurts-- on both sides-- but can be beautiful when voluntary.
What this book ultimately feels like is a surreal tale of abuse survivors reclaiming their sense of self and sexuality once more through sex and dance. Seraphine overcomes the slut-shaming of the court and the false dichotomies created for her and her sister to ultimately be her own person and find love on her own terms. It was very weird and had skeleton horse-men and some very light pony play, but I'm not sorry I read it. Not sure this author's style is for me necessarily but I appreciate her creativity and aesthetics. Also, if you read this and end up thinking that you need your puppets in your life (ew, why), watch Pinocchio and the Emperor of Night if you feel like scarring yourself for life.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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