CB12 > Recent Status Updates

I feel this way reading Tia Williams, but it’s so refreshing to read books by authors who love black people and can write us with humanity

4.5 but still great

The one thing I’m not getting is if everyone knows she betrayed them, why are they asking her to come back to the syndicate? Maybe I missed something here.

The magic system is really great and it’s a fabulous set up for the rest of the series — but we’re gonna need like 25 more characters and a lot more geo-political machinations (and less “it’s always been yous!!!?!) to earn that GBS comp

This is really great and I will be continuing the series, but this ultimately isn’t what I expected. so many creators who read mostly high fantasy and hard sf gushed about this book, so I was surprised it’s so romance-y and dark romance-y… but also not?

And all the Green bone saga comps made me think it would be more explicitly action-y but it’s a lot more angsty

Love a black character in the mix, but bros intro was abrupt

“Cling to the lie, you never know…Lie all the way to the scaffold, lie with the rope around your neck, let them bury your lying corpse still sticking to its story.”

I thought this book would be a little more serious like this plot is straight jealousy troupe I’m crying

Oh the parallels between the relationships of mother figures!! Catch it

Man I used to love the “pretending I’m with someone else troupe” but maturity is realizing that is something a shitty guy would do lowkey

The mom’s story my god! 😭😭

The ending cliffy is so strong I almost forgot the last part of this book was pwp with a ff ass epilogue

But this is really good so far overall!

The green bone saga comps are applicable in the sense that there’s rival gangs and a sci-fi/fantastical drug that enhances powers, but the pacing and writing styles are completely night and day to me

As a New Yorker, the use of the term grand central to be the name of a a big scary gang is funny to me

Skimming some reviews and not enough people talking about how there are too many half flushed out povs to make the story cohesive

And spoiler spoiler spoiler

Moving right along from the fact he had a romance with her mom 🤔

The pacing is really weird- plot is mostly the characters standing around talking and everything has taken place in like 2 days

They’re telling you the hellgate is bad but I lk want them to open it so *something* interesting can happen on page

For a book made up of literal bible fan fiction and angels and demons, nothing is really happening

Mostly reading this at 3 am when insomnia bouts hit, but that multi chapter scene of them standing around outside talking dragged on and on with no payoff

This book has unnecessary pacing issues

Like this is a PNR, add in a random miscommunication fight of winged battle scene idk

Okay, their conversations are a little too complex for elementary schoolers

Luckily, reading complex mother-daughter relationships feels neutral to me at this point in time…we got the last chopper out of ‘Nam

Now this exploration of alchemy has to be better than redacted lol

Unfortunately Need to DNF for now, not because it’s not excellent, but because of the subject matter in relation to irl. Will revisit because this is amazing so far

My kind of carrying on

I know it’s popular amongst these journalists on twitter to talk about characters like the transformed wife, but literally l you’re super online or hate read fundie content - these people have no motion outside of a bubble

Me and my homies hate Lenard Leo!!

The British and southern accents! So unnecessary

I’m sorry I’m not a dnf girl but i HATE the audiobook narration style. She’s like mocking them in her tone, but it belies the entire purpose of the book: which is that these guys are terrifying and effective

The problem with reading most contemporary investigative books about tr*mpism and current far right movements is that no matter when it was published, by the time you read it — whatever is just happened is always much worse

Like even what *he* posted last weekend is worse than anything in this chapter, I’m sick!

On the topic of millennial authors… this character is supposed to be Lucifer, the actual devil, and he’s like I’m working on lashing out because it really hurt my friends and situationship in the past

Obviously such an important book, but I probably should have read over listening to the audiobook

The author (whose a journalist by trade) narrates and she does this derpy-millennial “get a load of this guy” voice when reading quotes from the evangelicals and it doesn’t match the tone of the work or the book cover/marketing…like, my shivers are actually timbered! This is as a serious as a heart attack!!