Amelia Halgren > Recent Status Updates

First person writing is always a little tricky and I’m finding the narrative style here to be a little florid for my taste.

I still want to finish this book but I’ve been missing my copy since last summer. :(

“An emperor who breaks laws is mad dog and a danger. But an emperor who will never break a rule is nearly as bad for he will be be able to recognize when a law must be changed.”

…hmm… while I agree that some rules SHOULD be broken and changed, this is a slippery slope and can just as easily be used for the harm if some as for their benefit.

Opening with torture and sex jokes… I don’t think this is going to be for me after all. Great title though!

This is my second attempt… I started this before Christmas but lost the thread and set it aside. Today I picked it up again and I’ve decided that this very description laden book just isn’t for me.

Not for me… not the characters, not the vibe

Im gonna DNF this… maybe just not for me? I can’t seem to settle into this world. Neither the world building nor the characters and their motivations make sense to me.

This is described as a gothic novel… and it certainly has the plot of one. But it’s just not very atmospheric and I haven’t yet gotten hooked almost a quarter of the way in . This one just may not be for me.

This is my second attempt. I think this one just isn’t for me. It’s very character driven but I find the characters either unlikable, unrelatable, or a little too real and kinda depressing. It’s not at all a bad book or badly written, just not for me right now.

Good start but not really what I was hoping/in the mood for.

Maybe I’ll come back to this? It’s a good book but it’s really long and I lost steam when another reserved I’ve been waiting on became available. Now THIS one is due and I’m not done yet…

I’m not getting invested in this… I’m going to move on…

I’m gonna DNF this. It’s well written but I’m having trouble keeping up with all the characters and it’s just not what I was expecting, not what I’m in the mood for right now.

I think I’m going to stop early… this isn’t really much of a fairytale and that’s what I was looking for. This is much more about dysfunctional families… it may eventually be a found family story too but this isn’t the escapism I was hoping for.

“Relief feels like happiness when you don’t know the difference.”

“Rescue was bad. People who wanted you to be vulnerable and grateful tended to get very angry when you stopped being vulnerable and didn’t act grateful enough.”

Was that a reference to grandma’s feather bed or just a coincidence of measurements…?

“…forming a shape rather like a caterpillar —if a caterpillar were nine feet tall and six feet wide.”

“Why do you not say something to her?”

Sarkis groaned, “Because I have too much power over her right now.”

…The priest had never been slow on the uptake, “You don’t think she’ll feel safe saying ‘no’ to you.”

“I’m not willing to risk it.”

😭🫠🥹🥰

Eh… I’m not really a fan of the writing. It’s a little repetitive and observations meant to be profound seem simplistic. I’m think I’m done.

I had some issues with my audiobook or maybe the player so I didn’t get to finish this before the due date.

May have to buy this book…

I’m sad to say, I don’t think this one is for me even though I’ve enjoyed everything else by this author. I’m struggling to feel like I really know the characters even after twelve chapters. Worse…Sexual harassment/assault is uncomfortably common in this story.

“Tomorrow, in my experience is only worth worrying about about when there’s something you can do about it.”

I can’t get into this. The arguments between these two are just ugly and cruel and so much of what’s keeping them apart is just impatience and poor communication.

“I understood… the longing… for a place where they and their children can be safe and powerful, the bottomless hunger that makes us willing to devour others down to their bones.”

The author keeps mentioning along the way how many of these magical creatures were originally life forms created by wizards… is this a metaphor for all the ways in which the human race creates problems for itself?