Status Updates From Champion of the Rose (Dares...

In general, I find Host's sci-fi to be more creative than her fantasy, but I am really interested in the way that Host subtlety plays with our expectations on how romance and sex should be treated. She never draws attention to it, but it's distinctively different. It's one of the more interesting things about this book.

I almost always think the same thing coming out of an Andrea K. Host book: very creative, pretty well-written, shame it's so complicated I can barely follow it.

Conversations between really powerful people full of long monologues where they explain the plot make for really boring climaxes.

It is way too late in the story for the threat to still be this vague. There's some tension, but not as much as Host wants there to be.

I do kind of like the way Host writes about sex in relation to power. It's the first thing in all these court dramatics that was at all interesting to me.

I'm really thinking that fantasy just isn't my genre, apart from magical realism. This isn't bad or anything, it's just really, really boring to me.

My impatience for royal court drama probably means that I just shouldn't be reading high fantasy. This isn't bad, but I'm very bored by the plot.

Probably the best thing about Host's writing is how creative her worldbuilding always is. I find the mythos here a lot easier to follow than it normally is, and I'm really enjoying this book for that, if not much else.

I think monarchy drama just doesn't interest me very much. Same reason I couldn't really get into Song of Ice and Fire.

The worldbuilding is pretty interesting, but I just find the story directionless, and hard to follow. Although in terms of ability to follow, this is probably the simplest thing Host has ever written, so eh.

So, Soren's goal for the last 25% of the book, which was framed as the driving force behind the story, is suddenly resolved, and suddenly, there's nothing in particular moving the story forward. Wonderful.

I know I'm basically just repeating myself, but seriously, there is absolutely nothing to draw me in and make me interested in this book. How is it possible that someone who made the fascinating and original world of the Touchstone series could also create something so bland and generic as this?

Maybe I'm just not being open-minded enough. There's nothing wrong with the story exactly, it's just completely uninteresting to me. There's nothing that hooks me in, no particular reason for me to root for Soren or care about anything that's going on.

The biggest problem with Host's books is always how overly-complicated they are, and I'm honestly just waiting to see how long that takes to come into effect. Already, I can see the seeds of it taking shape.

I'm starting to think I'm just not a big fan of Andrea K. Host's work outside of her YA sci-fi. Maybe it's just too early in the book, but I have absolutely zero interest in this story. Fantasy usually doesn't interest me very much, and this is no exception.

Man, has Host's prose always been this purple? This looks like a semi-interesting premise for a novel, but... seriously, I remember Host's writing being way better than this, even in her books I didn't like. Not a great first impression.

Maybe the fantasy moon has retrograde motion