Emily > Recent Status Updates

These characters are so miserable and think they are burdens to each other but they will not speak to each other about it and I am getting SO MAD

“‘A king can reign a thousand years from a castle built on clouds.’ If only girlhood were such a kingdom. Nothing would ever change.”

“But what he had not understood until now was this: he could not make the world see him as he wished. Instead the world pressed in upon him, molding, crushing, until he was the shape they made him. Until he fit the image of the enemy.“

“The only reason anything matters is because it ends.”

“I wanted you, too. For so long. It was terrible. Sometimes I could barely eat—sorry, I know that sounds like the strangest thing. But for days I didn’t feel hungry at all. I was…occupied. You took away all the other wanting from me.”

Giggling and kicking my feet are you kidding

“There she was again: yearning miserably as if she were in some sort of Romance novel, with a capital R.”

“Effy stared and stared at the line ‘a woman’s mind is too frivolous.’ It stung her like a snakebite, a sudden whiplash of pain.”

“Her fear had transfigured the entire world. Looking at anything was like trying to glimpse a reflection in a broken mirror, all of it warped and shattered and strange.”

“She had the sudden and familiar sensation that she was underwater, the tide rolling ceaselessly over her.”

I love the imagery in this book

He turned to look at her, shock and rage sweeping across his face.
“You didn’t save me,” he said when he was finally capable of speech.
“You just put us in hell for two years.”

This book is breaking my heart I can’t catch a break

“He looked at her, and she could see the whole war in his eyes, the toll that came from struggling with no end in sight, driven by a terror of what might happen if he ever stopped.”

My heart hurts for them

"Besides—" She looked squarely at Pace.
"—I’ll probably die young, so I’d be a terrible mother."

I’m actually crying wtf

“You are not replaceable,” he said, hands trembling against her shoulders. “You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people. The reason I’m here—the reason I’m doing any of this—is to keep you alive. To keep you safe. That was the deal.”

Screaming crying throwing up

“You’re like a rose in a graveyard,” he said, and his lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I wonder what you could have turned into without the war.”

AHH THE ICONIC LINE

“He’d seemed so human, and she didn’t like thinking of him as human.
Undying. Murderer. Spy. Target. Tool.
That was how she needed to view Ferron.
Not as someone who could be hurt. Not as someone who didn’t understand blood loss and who rambled explanations. Not as someone who assumed a hand extended was meant to hurt him.”

😭

“She was a vibrant corpse, hardly different from the necrothralls haunting Spirefell.”

“And he wondered if there would ever be a day that came when all this was unnecessary, when white people would look at him and Anthony and simply listen, when their words would have worth and value because they were uttered, when they would not have to hide who they were, when they wouldn’t have to go through endless distortions just to be understood.”

“But Robin had been bending for so long. And even a gilded cage was still a cage.”

“In truth, though, Robin found it was actually quite easy to put up with any degree of social unrest, as long as one got used to looking away.”

“English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular.
And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.”

“After all, we’re here to make the unknown known, to make the other familiar. We’re here to make magic with words.”

“Inside, the heady wood-dust smell of freshly printed books was overwhelming. If tobacco smelled like this, Robin thought, he’d huff it every day.”

Precisely

“No, sir,” Darlington said as he disentangled himself from Alex, his hand at the small of her back like a hot coal.

Living for these scraps of Alex and Darlington, I need them together immediately

“The gentleman of Lethe had returned.”

AHHHHHH

“Was it you that night?” She could see the circle of protection was fraying, dissolving into sparks. He is dangerous. He is not what you think. “At book and snake? Did you use the corpse to spell my name?”
“Galaxy Stern,” Darlington said, his eyes flashing gold, “I have been crying out to you from the start.”

😭

Why is there another string of murders right now?
I just need Alex and Dawes to get Darlington OUTTTT

“She read paperbacks too, one after the next like she was chain-smoking—romance, science fiction, old pulp fantasy. All she wanted to do was sit, unbothered in a circle of lamplight, and live someone else’s life.”

My girl 😭

Where is Darlington???? Who killed Tara??? How are the societies tied up in this??? What’s going on with the bridegroom??? Why do I suspect Belbalm???
So many questions, I am LOVING this book
Also I love Alex I want the world for her 😭

Why is this book so sad ????