Robin > Recent Status Updates

The split-consciousness is really elevating the plot now. It’s gone from a gimmick to a solid narrative device.

The jump to a new set of POVs in a new setting is a bit rough, but I’m slowly picking up on their personalities and motives. Too-cool-for-school assassin, secret wizard mafiaso, VIRGIN TEEN, blowhard pretending to be dumb, Lady Macbeth Lite, guard with a SECRET. PAST.

“The question was meant to be rhetorical.”
“Rhetoric? In a sewer?”

He can never make me hate you, Ardee.

Yumi discovers binge-watching

Wait she can ask the spirits to become complex machine-like tools, which makes them separate into a bright feminine form and dark masculine form. Her planet is bright and warm, Painter’s is dark and cold. They can see each other’s planets in their skies… were their worlds one world that was separated??

The plot is moving at just the right speed and focusing on the moments that matter. Also refreshing to follow a competent and focused protagonist who still has a lot to learn.

NOOOOOOOO. NO.

Again with West. He keeps quietly complaining about the shape of these drafted soldiers. They don’t build their tents right. They can’t march in neat lines. It’s too bad West isn’t ~the highest ranking soldier there~ to set them straight.

Excuse my language, but West is such a little bitch. Where was that anger and boldness when he hit his sister? Why can’t he find a backbone when a spoiled prince wants to send a thousand men to their graves for funsies? Why doesn’t he have his men carry that table of food out to the starving levies and lock the prince up “for safety”?

I’m surprised how well Novik upped the stakes in this one.

That was too personal for a first date? I’ve had dates tell me thrir entire childhood trauma ten minutes in.

Mortified for him

Ok cute so far

I want to beat his dad senseless for crimes of Shit Fathering.

El is so petty and bitter and honestly I love her for it. Get your bag, petty queen.

I think this book showed its hand too fast. I was liking it, and now the Big Plot is here, including Sarcastic Banter™ that is too often a substitute for proper characterization and immersion. We shall see...

So far so good. We’ve got a protagonist with moxie.

Ok this book is genuinely disorienting me with its pacing. A character is now thinking back to an event that happened several days or weeks ago, and we’re just now getting her flashback that reveals the fallout of this event, but the flashback is written in past tense instead of perfect past. The main throughline narrative has long since left that event behind.

This book flows a lot better than the first, probably bc having a thorough editor is part of the package of a traditional publisher picking up your book. Still, it’s written in third-person deep, and Blake keeps giving nuggets of the personal thoughts of characters outside the proper POV.