AJ > Recent Status Updates

"Someone made a wish," she says, "and you're its answer."

OKAY

"Because your life will not be a happy one. You've sensed that already, haven't you? [. . .] That's because you are not the hero of this story. In stories there are a hundred roles, and you have yours just as the swan has his. Yours is not a role that has a happy ending."

jesus christ, okay 😭

I don't think there's been even a mention of a single queer woman in this entire series. . .

We love a glove kink. 👏🖤

“For here, for now, just between us two, for no other reason save I am me & you are you, I tell you this: I am glad, glad that you are alive. To see you take breath puts the breath back in my lungs. If there must be another my fate is twined around, I am glad it is you.”

READING THIS THE FIRST TIME AROUND MADE ME INSANE. ON A REREAD 2 YEARS LATER AFTER I KNOW HOW THEIR RELATIONSHIP & STORY ENDS? I NEED SEDATED!

Rereading & it's almost hilarious how quickly everything starts to go wrong. They're all so young & it's heartbreaking to see them at the beginning before everything; it literally starts with a 7yo watching his father behead someone & somehow that's the least awful thing to happen to Bran & the Stark family.
'The light threw his shadow clear across the yard & for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.'

"We have no time to worry what Prince Regal does inland. Let him go to Tradeford. Our lives are here, and here we must stand and fight." Oh, Fitz, my love, if only it had been that easy. But this book ends with you beaten and tortured and poisoned with your body and face forever changed, with you dead, because Regal was put aside.

If there's one thing Hobb does absolutely correct, it's the creeping sense of dread.

he wants to be dommed by her so fucking badly~. ❤️

reading this book for the first time and feeling the overwhelming dread building up vs. doing a reread, knowing how this book ends. . .

my feelings are already irreparably hurt and i'm not even 1/4th done with my reread of this damn series.

i feared i made a mistake reading network effect before this. 🥲 the one time i should have actually looked at reviews beforehand.

okay, he's big and smells like gingerbread - got it. (praying that this is a cishet romantasy that finally won't be wasting my time. 🥲🤞)

I told it, 'Don’t hurt my humans.' //
Then it added, 'I’m not going to hurt your humans, you little idiot.'
Arada lifted her brows, startled, and Thiago looked boggled. I said, 'You’re using the public feed, everyone can hear you.'
'So are you,' ART said. 'And you’re leaking on my deck.' //
I said, “Stop talking to my human.”
ART said, 'Make me.'

it's fine i'm fine i'm not crying 🤧❤️

" Unidentified One sounded even more amused. 'You had better have the weapon we were told of, or I’ll take your ribs out one by one and break them in front of your little face.'
I saved that for future reference. Unidentified One seemed to have gone to some trouble with the wording of that threat, it would be a shame if they never experienced it firsthand. "

murderbot, i adore you 🤧❤️

"It sounds all self-sacrificing and dramatic, telling it this way. And I guess it was, maybe. What I was mostly thinking was that there wasn't going to be one dead SecUnit on this embarkation floor, there were going to be four."

KICK THEIR ASSES BABY

The men shifted uncomfortably.
“So?” Kaladin asked. “What’s the problem? Sigzil can read his own language. Storms, I can read glyphs.”
“It’s not the same,” Skar said.
“It’s feminine,” Drehy added.
“Drehy,” Kaladin said, “you are literally courting a man.”

Kaladin Stormblessed, I love you. "You are literally gay & you're out here 5 seconds away from calling Renarin a slur for reading."

so thankful for the bridge four povs. 😭🫶

As someone who doesn't normally enjoy dark academia, I'm enjoying this so much more than I'd expected. As upsetting (and horrifyingly familiar) as it is, the depth and discussion given to the disastrous, disgusting, and continued effects of colonization and the killing and erasure of Indigenous peoples and their cultures is not something I had expected to come across in a more "mainstream" book.

“Oh, you’re not going home, Silka.”

let's fucking go

still have a problem with the writing but, fuck, if i'm not crying

“Angels, Lenore Dove told me, are humans with wings [...] A good world for good people to go to. But Lenore Dove is the winged being on my mind at the moment. If there is anything after the life I’m about to lose, will I be with her again? Like the guy in her song, I’d sure like to know.”

my eye is twitching. was an editor not present throughout this entire book? i swear i remember a more competent author.):

" "We’re wild like our chariot horses. I slugged our escort and Haymitch called out President Snow. Nobody pushes us around.”
“We’re unpredictable,” says Wyatt.
“Just a bunch of loose cannons,” I agree.
The Peacekeepers open the doors and we head in, sending out our best loose-cannon vibe. "

What. . . is this writing? Oh, my god. I'm literally gritting my teeth through every page. What happened here?

this is all so. . . underwhelming. how am i more than halfway through and nothing has really happened? and what has happened has not been exciting, nor unexpected. it's one thing for high fantasy to be cozy, and it's an entirely different thing to have a soft high fantasy claim that it has "cutthroat court politics," etc. when it really doesn't. the fact that this won awards for best fantasy is. . . interesting.

All I can say is. . . I'm trying to be nice about the writing, but it's hard. Incredibly juvenile, even for a YA. 😢

i am quickly becoming far too attached to csevet. . . which, in a high fantasy, means he's either going to betray maia or die - most likely both.

Watching Fitz & Beloved go from

In Fitz's POV: "'Would you continue, if I asked it of you? As a friend?' The word sounded so odd from his lips. He spoke it without mockery, carefully, as if saying it could shatter the meaning."

to

In Bee's POV: "He turned it over, showing a bloody palm. His cracked lips moved.
Beloved.
He could not say the word, but I knew it.
So did his Fool."

is actually fucking insane.