Well, what a beautiful return to lovely childhood memories that was. If I felt any human emotions ever, I could almost get worked up about it.
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Replace “ones” with “books” and I feel much the same as...is this Sirius? It really has been a decade since I’ve read the books and I’ve never seen the movies.
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Okay but really important question: How do people like Snape?! I remember what is supposed to “redeem” him, but he is really one of the most awful characters I’ve read. “Always”? Bleh. I wish Fluffy killed him. Every time he shows up I have a temper tantrum. (See below for visual aid.)
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I have to be honest, I was halfway convinced I wouldn’t like this book much at all. I tend to have opinions that are irritatingly against the YA grain, and then I can’t join in the fun. (Okay, yes, I’m mainly talking about Throne of Glass.) Instead, I read the whole thing in one sitting. And it’s the week before finals, too. Ain’t that logical? (Harry is me trying to study; Hermione is my mind reminding me there’s HP to read.)
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My only complaint about this is a very English major one: none of the poems/songs have meter! They sound all lopsided. (How nitpicky is that?! The truth is I loved this book, but I still love to complain.)
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Now I’m about to die because I don’t own a copy of the second book AND I WANT TO READ THE NEXT ONE. I don’t know what to do!
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Bottom line: Who am I kidding? You’ve all read this. And you all know it to be an absolute…
god, that was the worst attempt at a title/month pun yet. i'm so sorry. if it helps, i wish i never started this, but nowwelcome to...PERSUAS(JULY)ON?
god, that was the worst attempt at a title/month pun yet. i'm so sorry. if it helps, i wish i never started this, but now here we are, all of us in a sisyphus situation at the start of every new project. except worse. the guy who's getting his guts eaten on the daily by a big bird. prometheus.
(isn't that kind of the most torturous part of that punishment - that he clearly has it so much worse than sisyphus and yet in comparison, zero household name recognition? tough stuff.) (like, prometheus is obviously famous, but you don't throw his example around like my boy sisyphus. sad.)
ANYWAY. welcome back to Project Long Classics, the series in which elle and i read a long classic over the course of the month, too make it less scary!
some updates here: 1) we're rereading, 2) this isn't long, and 3) it's not coming from a place of fear. but otherwise, we're all set.
we're also reading this for our book club - join the discussion here follow on instagram here
let's go!!!
DAY 1: CHAPTER ONE we're immediately late (today is july 2), and yet that's fine, because i love this book and also i only have to read one chapter a day this time around. living the dream.
something i love about anne elliot is that she should be quite boring - a real fanny price, if you will - and yet she isn't.
and relatedly, i get why people are upset by what appears to be her fleabag-ification in the upcoming adaptation...but i am capable of separating the adaptation from the book (on rare and special occasions, like arbor day and half-birthdays) and i think it seems fun.
DAY 2: CHAPTER TWO look at us, catching up!
i love how in old times you could just call people "unsuitable." i wish we still had that. "i find that acquaintance to be one well below your standing, and altogether unsuitable" (or something like that) sounds so much better than "you are my friend, and i like hanging out with you, but i find your friend very annoying."
DAY 3: CHAPTER THREE WENTWORTH MENTION!!!!!!
genuinely...the yearning already...you gotta give it up for jane.
DAY 4: CHAPTER FOUR a day behind because i was drinking to make it through our nation's birthday. bleh. escapist reading time!
DAY 5: CHAPTER FIVE i just...left this blank yesterday.
read the chapter. added this to my update feed. didn't say a thing.
the first few chapters of this are (i think) even more uneventful than usual austen books. maybe because it's less funny? i don't know. it's a lot of past to establish, where we're usually picking up right in the swing of things relatively speaking.
DAY 6: CHAPTER SIX i don't like, also, the pity-party we have to throw anne every other paragraph at the beginning. yes she is lonely and her sisters are annoying. let's get to the romance part!! or give her a hobby at least.
but here is some drama! another slay for miscommunication, a trope that endures through the centuries.
wait why did jane go this hard: "The real circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were, that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard of, and scarcely at all regretted, when the intelligence of his death abroad had worked its way to Uppercross, two years before." like jane he's dead! take mercy you have already killed him!
DAY 7: CHAPTER SEVEN wentworth!!! i'll kill you!!! poor anne. suddenly the pity party is working on me.
DAY 8: CHAPTER EIGHT "But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days." slay mrs croft.
poor anne again!
DAY 9: CHAPTER NINE well, folks. persuasion (2022) has debuted on rotten tomatoes with a score of 27%.
i can no longer pretend it's extremely likely that i'll watch it, but! onward.
all the best crushes come from one (1) completely inane moment.
DAY 10: CHAPTER TEN catching up! (took another day off to be drunk. this is a tradition, at this point.)
there are so many Charleses in this. it seems to be a personal affront.
DAY 11: CHAPTER ELEVEN lmao the whole gang is taking a road trip to visit wentworth's friend, who ol' captain thinks loved his dead wife more than any man has ever loved a woman, and anne NO JOKE thinks "he has not, perhaps, a more sorrowing heart than I have."
pull it together, girlfriend.
DAY 12: CHAPTER TWELVE action chapter!!! i love immersing myself in a 19th century understanding of medicine. when you jump up and down too many times, you almost die, and them's the breaks.
one of anne's most relatable characteristics is being like "hopefully i'm too old to blush now" and then blushing constantly.
DAY 13: CHAPTER THIRTEEN "Lady Russell had only to listen composedly, and wish them happy, but internally her heart revelled in angry pleasure, in pleased contempt, that the man who at twenty-three had seemed to understand somewhat of the value of an Anne Elliot, should, eight years afterwards, be charmed by a Louisa Musgrove." this rules. i cannot be a lady russell hater for this alone.
DAY 14: CHAPTER FOURTEEN at the i-look-forward-to-my-daily-chapter-every-day phase of this :)
goddamn. anne can PULL.
DAY 15: CHAPTER FIFTEEN "The worst of Bath was the number of its plain women. He did not mean to say that there were no pretty women, but the number of the plain was out of all proportion. He had frequently observed, as he walked, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or five-and-thirty frights; and once, as he had stood in a shop on Bond Street, he had counted eighty-seven women go by, one after another, without there being a tolerable face among them. It had been a frosty morning, to be sure, a sharp frost, which hardly one woman in a thousand could stand the test of. But still, there certainly were a dreadful multitude of ugly women in Bath; and as for the men! they were infinitely worse. Such scarecrows as the streets were full of!" this is the funniest and most relatable passage in the whole thing. as someone who has a rule that i should not be forced to view anyone ugly when watching television (a guideline continually broken by basketball coaches and the existence of most conservative politicians), i have to stan sir walter.
DAY 16: CHAPTER SIXTEEN anne's life really seems like such a snooze, from one girl who is always right to another. but at least i have indoor plumbing. and refrigerated cookie dough.
DAY 17: CHAPTER SEVENTEEN the thing about jane austen books that we can forget when it's adaptation time is that the love interest is often not the most handsome of the gang. wickham is probably handsomer than darcy. mr elliott is certainly more handsome than wentworth.
but still. how can we be expected, as a society, to root against henry golding??
anyway. a kinda boring Anne Is Perfect chapter.
DAY 18: CHAPTER EIGHTEEN come on, jane...give me some yearning today!
asked and answered.
DAY 19: CHAPTER NINETEEN every day has to be a yearning day at this point.
WOO!!! things are picking up!
i will say i feel like anne's family lacks nuance compared to, say, the bennets or the woodhouses, who are flawed characters but have their arcs and their positive traits. elizabeth and mary and sir nobility what's his name feel a little black and white by comparison.
and speaking of things i will say... "the handsomest and best hung of any in Bath" is a great description. should have been used somewhere besides curtains.
DAY 20: CHAPTER TWENTY "A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman. He ought not; he does not." AHHHH!!!!!!
oh boy. yearning city. this whole section is everything. and the letter soon!!!
DAY 21: CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE ahhhh!!! jane sure knows how to cancel a guy.
DAY 22: CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO the amount of drama in this chapter...my sister is watching below deck in the background as i write this and their screechy voices pale in comparison!!!
DAY 23: CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE the penultimate day!!! i'm going to miss this so much. should i do this all the time???
...no. the last thing i need is the excuse for yet another project.
THE LETTER!!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD.
not only is this the most romantic love letter of all time (and it's not close! i openly read this out loud to someone i was with on the STREET!!! not as a declaration but just because it's really good and everyone should know about it), but the FRAMING. the conversation anne has with harville! her confusion at wentworth's dismissal! the yearning! her reaction to his coming back! and her feelings after! AHHHH.
jane, no one does it like you. it'd be five stars for this alone.
DAY 24: CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR the end of an era. i have so enjoyed our time together.
this is a cute kind of epilogue-y chapter, like at the end of movies that were Based On A True Story when they tell you what happened to all the goofballs you've gotten to know. i love it. every book should either have a chapter like this or a sequel.
unless i didn't like the book. then it shouldn't have anything.
OVERALL this is still coming it at a close third in austen rankings for moi (after emma and pride & prejudice) but damn is it still good. that letter! that yearning! anne being a Nice Girl who isn't boring!
what a gift! rating: 5
--------------- general update
NETFLIX ADAPTATION STARRING DAKOTA JOHNSON AND HENRY GOLDING THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!
--------------- reread update
if you ever have the opportunity to spend an hour or so rereading this in a park on an unseasonably warm fall day, i recommend you take it
And THIS is The Winner’s Crime: [image] [image] [image] [image]
In short, THIS BOOK ROCKS. Arin is sort of just angsty all the time, which is eh, but Kestrel is a TOTAL BADASS. She just made it onto my all-time-favorite female characters list.
This book is yet another YA attempt at striking the balance between general badassery and romance, but this is the best take I’ve ever seen. Kestrel makes all decisions with her loved ones at heart, but she doesn’t let love or emotion hold her back. She’s tormented over any pain she has to cause to anyone, but she’ll do what she has to to become empress so she can have monopoly over decision-making. Basically, she’s terrific and I love her.
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I am very into politics as well, so when I see a YA book that has anything to do with politics, I’m like, count me in! So it was disappointing when the first book in the series was mostly lovey-dovey gross stuff and not the inner workings of a high-fantasy government. But I figured, hey, it was well written and took like two hours to read, so why not the sequel?
And let me tell you, it would not have taken me almost 6 months to pick this one up if I had known how political it was. This put love to the side and talked government, baby. Okay, no, it didn’t put love to the side, but it wasn’t on every page. Okay, yes, it was pretty much on every page, but the two characters spent most of the book apart so it wasn’t AS intolerable.
I’m scared I won’t like the next book as much, but I lowkey want to read it right now. Too bad I don’t have a copy yet.
Bottom line: work through the first book so you can read the hell out of this one. HIGHLY recommend! Best YA I’ve read in a hot second....more
i love this book so much, it means the world to me, i would do anything for it, and i have the exact proof.
because one time a guy i was dating (who woi love this book so much, it means the world to me, i would do anything for it, and i have the exact proof.
because one time a guy i was dating (who would prove to be supervillain-level evil, for unrelated reasons that would later reveal themselves) ghosted me.
while borrowing my (SIGNED!) copy of this book.
and when i realized months later that he still had it (long after i had already removed him on everything and deleted his number and paid a witch to cast a spell on him, as all healthy grown-ups do when they get over someone), i re-followed him on instagram.
but he didn't follow me.
so i had to make a group chat with him and my roommate in order to send him this request.
and then i had to SEE HIS STUPID FACE in order to retrieve it.
i did all that for this book. and i'd do it again!
this is a compelling, important, and well-written story. it is my go-to recommendation for writing on race, on the justice system, on systemic bigotry, and on the death penalty. i read this when i was somewhat undecided on the latter, and it set me on a decidedly anti- path. i have never looked back or doubted it. the equal justice initiative is still my go-to charity.
this was also my first-ever college assignment, and it set the stage for my entire post-mandatory education, and it was a blessing and a treat.
if all that didn't convince you of this book's must-read status, i don't know what to tell you. WHAT DO I HAVE TO OFFER YOU BUT THE LAST OF MY DIGNITY.
part of a series i'm doing in which i review books i read a long time ago and embarrass myself on multiple levels in the process...more
Oh, GOD. Why did I start rereading books?! It has only resulted in heartbreak. (Except you, Wanderlove. You know you’re different.) Years of ne[image]
Oh, GOD. Why did I start rereading books?! It has only resulted in heartbreak. (Except you, Wanderlove. You know you’re different.) Years of never picking up the same book twice? The right decision. Now there’s a 2-star book on my 2016 favorites shelf. WHAT KIND OF WORLD DO WE LIVE IN.
Anyway. This was...not as good as I remembered. Like, in a big way. (Note: There are some spoilers in here, I think, especially for A Court of Thorns and Roses.)
What would the two sweeping generalizations I’d make about the first and second half of this book be, you ask? I’m so glad you brought this up, fictional reader of this review. You get me. And to answer your fake question: I would say the first half of this book is super boring, and the second half is bonkers cringeworthy.
Oh, man, talk about an unpopular opinion. Don’t yell at me.
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O.K. (There’s something about spelling okay that way that makes me giggle.) Let’s get into it.
So, as you all know, we follow our girl Feyre. Feyre’s a bish who has PTSD after, like, killing people and dying and being resurrected and going through trials, et cetera. (Makes sense, no? Like, why doesn’t every YA fantasy protagonist have full-on PTSD.) Anyway, at the beginning of this book, she’s bundled up in a boring old love-nest with her loverrrrr from the first book, Tamlin. Feyre is all skinny (doesn’t eat and stress-vomits, I guess) and sad (she did a lot of things) and bored (not allowed to do anything, now) and tired (nightmares like it’s her JOB).
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Then Rhysand, the tall/dark/mysterious/flirtatious asshole (trope I’m never into) rescues her from Tamlin, who literally one second ago was the dream guy. (More on that later.) Feyre is bustled off to the Night Court, which rocks, to become a full on badass and have a ton of sex. (More on that later too.)
But...this book is kind of boring, a lot of the time. I know! I made it sound so exciting. That’s just because it’s impossible for me to be boring. I’m fun and thrilling all the time. Okay?!
Anyway. There’s a whole plotline, wherein war is coming and Feyre and the Gang™ must prevent it. (Feyre and the Gang™ is the name of the vintage hip-hop super group formed by Feyre and Rhysand, plus a handful of other goofballs: Mor, who is Rhysand’s...sister?, Cassian, who is his war guy, Azriel, who is his sneaky spooky spy, and Amren...I have straight up no idea what her deal is.)Again, may sound exciting, but I DID NOT FIND IT INTERESTING. All they do in this storyline is spend literally hundreds of pages info-dumping about some history guy named Jurian and corresponding with some human queens (humans are suuuuper boring, as we know).
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Confession: I allowed myself to skip skim these boring parts. Because they’re boring. And I didn’t care about them at all.
Even the big climactic scenes in this book were boring to me! The battle at Velaris? Snoozefest. The Cauldron bit, at the end? Soothed me to sleep like a lullaby. And fun stuff kept getting skipped entirely. At one point, Feyre’s like, “I’m going to catch the Suriel” and then the next sentence is, essentially, “I caught the Suriel.” I HATE IT.
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So, that’s the first half. The second half (or last third, really) is not any better. It’s just a different kind of terrible.
See, in this part, Feyre and Rhysand realize their ~loooooove~ for each other. Or, I’m sorry, not JUST their love. They’re destined for each other. They’re mates, you guys.
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What follows is a TOTAL CRINGEFEST. Feyre says the word “mate” easily 800 times. This is because, instead of doing, you know, actual writing, I’m assuming Maas just copied the mantra “Mate. My mate.” and pasted it on every page from here to Timbuktu. Which, kill me.
BUT IT DOESN’T END THERE. Rhysand and Feyre can’t even interact with each other without full-on f*cking. Doesn’t matter where they are. There are sex scenes (in gruesome, painful detail) in bathtubs, against walls, on kitchen tables. It’s nasty. A nonstop cringe party for what felt like years.
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And that brings me to maybe (dare I say) the most annoying bit of this book: The Tamlin Thing™. See, I didn’t like the first book even the first time around, so I refuse to reread it. But I don’t have to revisit that garbage dump to know that Tamlin was sure as sh*t presented positively as hell. With, like, no exceptions. He was endgame. (I remember preferring him to Rhysand, because, again, Rhysand is an example of a trope I abhor. Oh, boohoo, you’re a d*ck because you’re broken. Cry me a river, and get a personality while you’re at it.)
But back to Tamlin. From page one of this book, he’s presented as less than. He’s boring first, then oblivious, then uncaring, then full-on OPPRESSIVE in the span of fifty pages. With just a fraction of the book done, he’s so obviously a villain that Feyre has to be rescued...by the last book’s love interest-slash-villain.
It’s a total role reversal, and IMO, you can’t just write like that. You can’t just toss the last book to the wind because the fangirls preferred the mysterious guy with purple eyes. It’s ridiculous. It feels like fanfiction - like a thirteen-year-old writing a love story about herself and Harry Styles, but she switches and decides to go for Zayn. UGH. This freaking book, dude.
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There were good bits to this. The settings are really amazing (Velaris! The Summer Court!), and I liked when Feyre and the Gang™ hung out. I’m fairly into the characters (even Rhysand, walking/talking trope that he is, has his moments, and Feyre is pretty badass). I really do love the world, especially certain parts of it. I just wish that more of this book was spent with that stuff, the good stuff, instead of cheesy smut, info-dumps and poor writing technique.
Also, the ending was maybe the best part, which is so CLASSIC. That’s a next-level plot twist and cliffhanger. Now I’m a) tricked into thinking I liked this more than I did and b) eagerly awaiting the next book. I SEE YOU, MAAS.
Bottom line: This was fun sometimes, but mostly it hurt itself. WHY CAN’T YOU FOCUS ON THE BITS YOU’RE GOOD AT, SARAH?! God, I hope the next book is all sneaky spying and squad hangouts and not info-dumps and human interactions. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK?!
Epiphany: I’ve now given every Maas book I’ve ever read 2 stars.
------------------------ ORIGINAL REVIEW
5/5
AH. when's the next one?!
it's been such a long time since i really adored a book--and i never would have guessed that sentiment finally would have arrived in the form of the sequel to a book i felt so eh toward.
feyre is absolutely awesome. (finally.)
rhysand is pretty great too.
mor, cassian, azriel, amren, nesta, elain--they're all cool. (autocorrect just had a field day with those names.)
the writing was way better. (gives me hope for the rest of throne of glass!)
this year, i'm trying to read more for Quality instead of Quantity (after nearly ruining my life last year reading 365 boowelcome to...PROJECT 5 STAR.
this year, i'm trying to read more for Quality instead of Quantity (after nearly ruining my life last year reading 365 books), and so part of that will include revisiting every book i've ever rated as perfect!
please join me in praying that this project is whimsical and optimistic instead of a devastating loss of all my favorites.
this is one of my earliest favorites, and i remember it almost not at all, and i am nearly certain it won't hold up.
but life is about adventure.
and ultimately this is just as simple and lovely as i remember, and just as much a part of my favorite cross-media subgenre (Everyday Life Is So Stunning And Magical In Its Mundanity), but it does have some weirdnesses i didn't recall.
still an enjoyable read!
bottom line: from a five star fav to a four star fav!
-------------------- original review
i love translated books and i read this in one sitting. i also love character-driven novels. i love this man, this happiest man on earth, and his simple story. initially i gave this 3.5, but i'm dumb. this is a 5 star read....more
welcome back to project 5 star, in which i ill-advisedly pick up books i remember fondly and put them to the test of my current evil mind.
and, well.
i'welcome back to project 5 star, in which i ill-advisedly pick up books i remember fondly and put them to the test of my current evil mind.
and, well.
i'd like to apologize for 18 year old me. she knew not what she'd wrought.
this does have moments of true loveliness and piercing observations of the human experience, but it is so weighed down in pretension and gimmicks that it's almost impossible to see to them.
it was actually all i could do to get through this book, which shifts between three perspectives that each manage to be as unreadable as the last. our characters — 18th century residents of a shtetl, a metafiction JSF, and a pathetic tour guide named alex — have the power to be memorable and real, but are only the former.
and not in a nice way.
sorry to the ex-boyfriend who bought me a signed first edition of this.
bottom line: people change! it's a bummer. kinda.
2.5
----------------- original review
(view spoiler)[when it's 1:20 a.m. and you're thinking about your favorite book of the year (so far) again and you realize you never posted your review and you just havetohavetohaveto let everyone know how much you loved it.
This book was incredible. Truly. I’ve taken the last hour or two to just kind of continue with my life and try to absorb that experience. Because even though I’ve been reading this book for almost three weeks (bananas long for me), it still feels like one cohesive experience.
I just want to quote this book to you, if that’s okay. Just for a hot sec.
“There is no love--only the end of love.”
Between a grandfather and a grandson: “(You have ghosts?) (Of course I have ghosts.) (What are your ghosts like?) (They are on the inside of the lids of my eyes.) (This is also where my ghosts reside.) (You have ghosts?) (Of course I have ghosts.) (But you are a child.) (I am not a child.) (But you have not known love.) (These are my ghosts. The spaces amid love.)”
Maybe quoting it wasn’t a good idea, because I want to give swaths of it to you all. I’ll end up trying to trick you into reading by including ever-lengthening passages.
These characters may very well stay with me for the rest of my life. Lovely Alex, with his love for his brother and his grandiose lies and his dashed dreams and his wonderfully terrible English (“Did you manufacture any Zs?”). The metafiction how-much-is-real Jonathan Safran Foer, dedicated to his notebook, staunch vegetarian. Brod and her 613 sadnesses, her love for everyone and everything and no one and nothing. The Gypsy girl whose heart broke for Safran, whom she did not love, and his books organized by the colors of their spines. The shtetl of Trachimbrod, its Trachimday and the Time of Dyed Hands and surname-initialed residents (Bitzl Bitzl R was my favorite).
This book sometimes gave me a feeling like my heart was swelling up. My hand twitched for a pencil or a Post-It while I read these lovely words, but I was always too absorbed and soon forgot what I was trying to remember to do. That feeling is why I read.
This was slow to start, and I almost--god forbid--DNFed it. Can you imagine? Even two-thirds in I contemplated three stars, sadly reminiscing on my vast love of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
I know this review isn’t of YA, or a book that’s “in” right now, or a new release. I still hope you guys read this and will consider picking it up, though. Because I want to live inside this book.
Bottom line: I don’t even know what to say. I so badly want you to read it. But if you do and you don’t like it, even when you get to the beautiful, beautiful last seventy-five pages, please don’t tell me.
If other people need something besides a shapeshifting protagonist with an attitude problem, villain/sidekick best friendship, villain/hero forbidden If other people need something besides a shapeshifting protagonist with an attitude problem, villain/sidekick best friendship, villain/hero forbidden romance, and cute art, then that's cool.
But I am not other people.
Bottom line: This book is too good for its...own good?
-------------- pre-review
rereading a book i 5-starred in 2016 because i like to live dangerously.
update: maybe not a 5 star...but both nimona and 2016 me made some points.
curse the young adult romance industrial complex because why am i reading a nazi love story when i was promised a shapeshifting hitler assassin?
this dcurse the young adult romance industrial complex because why am i reading a nazi love story when i was promised a shapeshifting hitler assassin?
this disappointment was brought to you by PROJECT 5 STAR, an ongoing act of cynicism in which i put books i used to love to the test of my current cold and unfeeling heart.
this is a book i didn't remember which i read as an entirely different reader, when i was a teenager and hope sprang eternal. or something.
in other words, revisiting it was a recipe for disaster. or for masochism.
i see why teenage me liked this book, but it has all of the things that drive current me (the more important one) crazy: strange pacing, repetitive writing tics (she didn't have the heart. or maybe she had too much), a compulsory and annoying romance, an unearned plot twist, inauthentic-feeling historical fiction.
there was a time when i could look past all of that, somehow. but not now.
my heart is too wizened and my brain too critical to accept this sort of thing at my big age.
bottom line: i recommend this book to all teenagers with hearts of gold, and no one else....more
I’m only, like, 17% joking. I have no idea how to review this book. I barely even knew how to read this book, due to the fact that it was so devastatingly cool and exciting and unique and addictive that it almost made me illiterate.
When I first read this book, I loved it. Absolutely aDORED it. I five-starred it and participated in the hype and probably googled fan art exactly one time, which is as far as I ever get in terms of joining a fandom.
However. That guaranteed absolutely nothing.
As I have said 3467824628 times, any opinion of mine older than approximately 18 months cannot be trusted. I am on a continual process of growth and I am very stupid. Here is where I always list a hot take younger me had (such as thinking the television program "Degrassi" was the apex of cinematic art), or something dumb younger me did (such as literally never eat a salad even once), in order to illustrate just how stupid that was.
This is the person who read and loved Six of Crows.
That version of me was also #new to the book-internet scene and, ahem, DESPERATE TO FIT IN. I think I initially four-starred A Court of Thorns and Roses despite not liking it at all just to seem Hip and Down With The Teens.
Obviously I went back and surreptitiously changed that rating.
Anyway, what it’s coming down to is that it’s absolutely possible that then-me could have tricked myself into liking this book just out of a desperate desire for popularity, and that even if I did actually like it it wouldn’t matter because I was (and continue to be) a fool.
Luckily, THAT WAS NOT THE CASE.
This book is fan-f*cking-tastic. It blows all other YA fantasy out of the water (okay except The Raven Cycle I see you Maggie Stiefvater I would never forget about you Gansey).
It’s everything the genre should be. It’s creative and immersive and unique. It’s stylistically great without being overly stylized. The plotline is nearly nonstop exciting. There is a MAP.
Nearly most importantly of all, there is a HEIST. Everyone who’s anyone knows that the best trope-y plotline is a heist. We get squads and excitement and scheming and risk and THEFT. And just yesterday someone asked me earnestly if I’m a kleptomaniac, to which, after a bit of reflection, I answered “Yes.”
But there is a lil thing I mentioned in there that I need to talk more about. And it’s not my potential kleptomania. (Although maybe I should talk more about that too. In a different format.)
That thing is: THE SQUAD!!!!
The characters in this book are so fantastic. Our gang is made up of six people, whom I will now list here as if it’s even slightly possible that anyone hasn’t read this book yet. They are: Kaz, Inej, Jesper, Wylan, Nina, Matthias.
Is that a ranking? I don’t know. You decide. (Yes it is a ranking.)
I LIKE THREE OF THOSE CHARACTERS. THREE!! OUT OF SIX!!! To anyone else that may sound like a fairly low number. You know. Fifty percent. A failing grade. But I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of person, and by “always” I mean “exclusively in this exact scenario for the sake of my argument.”
What it comes down to is the fact that I rarely truly like even a single character in a book. So to like THREE!! IN ONE NOVEL! Unbelievable.
Kaz is a dark nightmare boy who threatens to be a Hot Boy With A Tragic Backstory And So He Is Allowed To Be Mean To Everyone Especially Girls He Likes And You Can’t Say Anything About It, but he subverts that trope gorgeously. (By which I mean: Leigh Bardugo is the queen of YA, and also literature and being a person in general.)
Inej is a spooky lil sneaky gal who climbs around stuff and is the single most powerful creature in all of fictional humankind. Also Inej is just a cool name. EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS BOOK AND ITS WORLDBUILDING IS COOL.
Jesper is a hilarious f*cked up lil monster who is trying his damn best and being a sarcastic sweetheart while he’s at it. Plus shooting at stuff, which adds some excitement and flair to the whole thing.
The other three...they’re just pretty boring. Wylan is Nice but that’s not enough to make me like a character. Nina is just like “Food!!! Yum!!! Love to eat, and also be sexy!!!” And if anyone could show me actual proof Matthias has one (1) trait besides liking Nina and being strong, I’d fall out of my chair. Because I’d be surprised. And also statistically speaking I’d probably be sitting.
BUT ANYWAY this is a five star review and that means I don’t have to complain!!! Who knew!! All new to me.
This book united stupid me and current me, which means that people who are dumb and have bad taste and people who are very very cool and like good things only can be united in liking this book.
It is literally so good that it’s impossible to not like it, even if you’re an idiot or picky. PICKY IDIOTS: UNITE!!!
Bottom line: Can anyone give me Leigh Bardugo’s mailing address? Not for anything creepy, I just want to blow a kiss into an envelope and ship it to her.
Oh, that is creepy? Got it. I would still like that address though.
-- PRE-REVIEW REREADING THIS BOOK WAS THE BEST DECISION I'VE MADE IN RECENT MEMORY.
and just last night, i decided to rewatch Fantastic Mr. Fox while eating peanut butter cup ice cream. so that's a high bar.
review to come!!
-- CURRENTLY-READING UPDATES
me: okay. school's amping up. extracurriculars are starting. the internship search is well under way. what should we do first?
also me: ...idk sounds like the perfect time to reread Six of Crows imo
--
this reread brought to you by the generosity of lily
was wondering why i felt sad and realized it's been way too long since i last read six of crows. so this'll probably solve it
This book is very, very long (it has tissue-paper pages! That’s how you know a YA book is too damn long). It intrMeh.
That’s really all I have to say.
This book is very, very long (it has tissue-paper pages! That’s how you know a YA book is too damn long). It introduces more characters I don’t care about, allowing me to realize that I really only care about Cress and Thorne. It spends a hundred thousand million years wrapping up every loose end, and still the plotline and conclusion manage to feel unsatisfying.
I really don’t have much to say beyond that.
The fact that this book is 827 pages long and I can’t even summon up two paragraphs about it says it all.
So let’s call that my bottom line and call it a day.
----------- pre-review
things about this book that are cute: - Cress - Thorne - Cress and Thorne
things about this book that are not cute: - the fact that it is 827 PAGES LONG.
review to comeee
----------- currently-reading updates
uh, this book is...long
----------- tbr review
if this book doesn't break my heart and make me cry i Will demand a refund...more
i have been reading this book forever. and i realize that coming from me, that means a week or two. but this book has existed, albeit in the back of mi have been reading this book forever. and i realize that coming from me, that means a week or two. but this book has existed, albeit in the back of my mind and in some form or another, since december or january. normally that would be repulsive to me, but i don't think this book should be read in even a week. i think it should be read in snippets over time. it feels most like a voyage that way, at least for me.
i don't feel qualified to even rate this book. i honestly can't believe i finished it.
i love steinbeck--he's up there with fitzgerald for me: an author i adore, an author whose breadth of work i will likely never read, as i selected each as a favorite after a couple of novels. and yes, this work contained those classic steinbeck irritations: the old man superiority to change and to the young; the ignorance of women--somehow his characteristic flat female characters exist, or fail to, even in nonfiction; the quiet racism that refuses to recognize itself.
yet this was a book about travel, about America, in the sharp, simple, philosophical voice i love. i marked this up over and over with an orange highlighter and blue Post-It scraps. steinbeck may have come to know america like few--maybe no one--have, and i feel fortunate to have seen a changing country through his eyes.
i suppose i must give this 5 stars, though i'm tempted to give it 4. but reading this was as much a labor of love as writing it must have been, and it isn't a work i'll soon forget....more
I try to seem “hip” and “cool” and “relatable” and “down with the teens” - and of course I totally am all of those thinI am a very pretentious person.
I try to seem “hip” and “cool” and “relatable” and “down with the teens” - and of course I totally am all of those things - but also I have my tendencies toward pretension. It’s who I am. Just last night I shuddered at the idea of popular music, like some kind of eight-hundred-year-old gremlin.
I am not proud of this side of me, but it’s who I am. And also it is important background information for you, dear Reader, going into this review. (That direct address to you as an audience member was me emulating this book, not an example of my pretension. Or was it???)
Anyway. It’s important that you know my capacity to be pretentious so that I can make this statement:
I don’t get how any reader can say they don’t like classics.
Oof. A doozy, right? Aren’t you glad I warned you? Now you know that that wasn’t just a one-off of self-serious condescension but rather a pattern of my personality and oh sh*t actually my explanation probably made the whole thing a million times worse. Now I’ve painted my insufferability as consistent.
Come back, everyone!!!! Let me explain!
What I need to explain is that this book is excellent, and also a classic. It is very very old but sometimes old stuff is still worth it! (I should know. I have the mannerisms of the type of grumpy old man that gets endearingly profiled in Scandinavian bestsellers.)
This is not the classic I would recommend that someone start with if they’re looking to get into the genre. It is very, very slow, and very wordy, and the language takes some settling in. But also this book is a literal gem.
It was published in 19th century England, which is no one’s idea of Progressive Central. But this book is jarringly feminist when the constraints it (and Jane) were working in are taken into account. Jane is an independent woman, and this book from eighteen freakin’ forty-seven tells her story.
Now, I love Jane Austen books as much as the next girl (if the next girl is pretty damn obsessed with Jane Austen), but that’s something not even all her books can say.
Here’s the thing about this book: I love nineteenth century fiction (or what I’ve read of it), but even if you didn’t you’d probably love this book. So much of this is unique, by the standards of then but also even the standards of today. It’s a romance, yes, which: extremely normal. But it’s a romance between two characters who are not conventionally beautiful, which is unbelievably rare.
It’s also not a romance that acts as basically the sole option for its female character. I love Pride & Prejudice, and I of course think Lizzie Bennet is a feminist (and awesome) character, but there’s no way for that book to end, really, that doesn’t include marriage for her. Three of the five Bennet sisters get married over the course of that book. It’s either that or old maid status, baby.
But not lil Jane Eyre. She does not allow marriage to be the only prospect for her!! She goes away and makes a life for herself and then decides whether she wants to follow that path. We don’t even see that in every 21st century romance.
Plus, Jane is an excellent character, and of a type we RARELY see. She’s serious and upstanding and smart and moral. She has a strong mind and she doesn’t shy away from that. She lacks the requisite features of today’s female subjects of romance: the quirkiness or the humor or the adorkable way she trips and falls/spills coffee/etc. She also lacks the nineteenth-century version of a lot of those traits. And it is so goddamn refreshing I can’t even tell you.
And on top of all that, the language in this book is so gorgeous I want the whole manuscript tattooed on me.
Which would be wild, because this is about a million pages long. And speaking of, yes, it is very slow and hard to get into and basically you have to adjust to a whole new reading experience. So I wouldn’t recommend starting off your nineteenth century fiction binge with this book.
But I would recommend getting into nineteenth century fiction solely for the purpose of reading this book.
Bottom line: IT’S JUST SO DAMN GOOD, YOU GUYS.
------------- pre-review
hey um...i love this book so stupid much???
if you've got a free few hours over the course of the next few months i HIGHLY recommend rereading this book at a snail's pace. worked out for me very well.
i should probably shout about my adoration of this book for several pages so. full review 2 come...more
There’s instalove, because of course. Characters are either a) horrendous or b) flat or c) somehow both??? Every other sentence is actually two forced together by a comma, because we all full-on adore a good comma splice amiright. Predicates suffer without subjects. The whole thing is so horrifically, tragically, life-bendingly slow and so boring it took me 9 days to suffer through it.
However.
The setting is glorious, magical, awe-inspiring, creative, unreal, unique, fascinating, and altogether so painfully lovely any reader with half an imagination will be dying to pay a visit. DYING, I tell you.
It’s better than Hogwarts. Better than any fantasy novel. It’s life-changing and gorgeous and all around my favorite setting for all time forever.
BUT.
Don’t forget.
This book is also really bad.
So how, pray tell, do I f*cking rate something like that? How do I review it???
I guess I’ll backtrack a little and cross my fingers for some fresh #inspo.
The Night Circus is a sprawling book (this is a nice way of saying it takes place over like a million years and is still somehow boring). We follow the creation of le Cirque des Rêves, which is an entirely black and white circus with some delicious snack options that takes place at night. It arrives without warning, no announcement precedes it, etc etc, you’ve heard the quote.
Something that should make this more interesting and instead makes it, in a shocking twist, much more boring, is that the circus is also the venue for a long-term magical battle.
Celia and...sh*t what’s his name...Marco? Is it Marco? Okay yes it’s Marco. Celia and Marco are two magician people (illusionists) who are both involved in the circus and use it to one-up each other until eventually they get way too busy making sweet sweet love to even try to be interesting.
It’s less hurtful because they were never interesting, really.
So that’s the plot but I cannot emphasize enough that it does not matter, is really boring, and only serves to take away any number of pages from just describing the circus. Straight up if this was 600 pages of unbroken description...five stars boi.
But it’s not. And here we are. Dealing with these cretins. (Marco, by the way, is the sh*ttiest person in the world and makes Boring But Otherwise Mildly Unpleasant Celia seem like a goddamn saint.)
As mentioned, the characters are, without exception, boring or bad or otherwise unpleasant. There was exactly one individual I liked, and said person was taken out of the picture faster than I can say “what the f*ck why do I never like any books I loved this book literally two years ago what is going onnnnn.”
And I can say that surprisingly quickly. (Because of practice. Because of all the times I’ve said it.)
God I hate the name Marco on this dumbass white boi. Unrelated but I do.
Speaking of that warty wimp piece of sh*t, T H E I N S T A L O V E! If I have ever read a worse “““love””” story (love in excessive quotes because I’m prettyyyyy sure you can’t be in love with someone just because his eyes are such a lovely green!) I cannot recall it. Marco and Celia are nasty together. Not because they’re cruel (although Marco is, to an innocent - albeit boring - woman), or because they’re gross in the sense that, like, a witch in a live-action Disney movie is gross (although it inspires a similarly visceral disgust in me): because they are sooooo lovey-dovey and emotive. Right away. And also for all time forever with no relief.
Enough o’this.
Bottom line: instalove. Horrible characters. Terrible (nonexistent) plot. BUT ALSO THE BEST SETTING EVER WITH NO EXCEPTIONS.
I don’t know, man. You decide.
------------------ pre-review
i did not like this book at all.
also, i loved it.
(both of these things are equally true.)
review to come, once i get that sh*t sorted
----------- currently-reading updates
me: *moves to college*
me: *has literally no time, doesn't open laptop for 3 days, has had a total of 35 minutes to read*
me: hmmm...i think it's time to pick up this 500-page, all-consuming fave of a book for a reread
wish me luck in my bad decision making!!! you have to, condemning my horrible choices is mean!!!!!!...more
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