Madd > Recent Status Updates

"Finally, he could claim him as his son. 'He is mine,' he would say. It was all any man wanted, to point at his son as he passes and say to the people, 'He is mine. That is my boy. I made him. There he goes.' "

Bro :(

Like I want to see more of Owen and Siobhan’s friendship. The author does a lot more of telling than showing in this book and it kinda sucks, considering the idea of the book is really good but the execution is kinda eh. I do really like Hannah and Lottie though

It’s good but it feels so empty. Like someone is giving me a summary of a book rather than me reading it myself. Which ig is the point considering this is Siobhan recounting the story of Owen (as the title says), but idk. Where’s the drama, the intrigue or sm. I like how it rewrites history to make it make sense in a dragon dominated world but idk it’s kinda bland.

Having Hollister being skinned alive feels so unnaturally dark for a book like this. Like so out of place it’s bad. Like the author wanted to throw in that extra edge to prove how dark it is or sm idk I’m so tired of this book I just want it to be over

Bruh hollister wanting to actually bring his friend back from the dead was so random

Paul is such a manipulative asshole Jesus Christ poor Thomas free Thomas everyone needs to go

So desperate for attention that he can’t stand his brother being mad at him for five seconds even though he deserves it that he’s dragging along a girl into a mess that he started just so he doesn’t have to feel awkward around Thomas. I’m not sure if the author meant to make Paul this much of an asshole on purpose or believes I am genuinely supposed to root for him.

This entire book is just watching this whiny selfish prick be a terrible friend, making everything about himself, and pining after a girl he just met. Thomas is saving his life getting out of London and the only thing he has to think about is Verity. Not a thank you or care to the man he called his brother. God I hate him.

“He knows it’s the right thing to do, but he lacks a backbone. We will see if his heart is strong enough to do the work of the spine.” Bars

God and Paul pmo. So haughty and mighty in the way he speaks of God yet is like the hugest asshole ever. And not even in like a narrative sense of, “he’s a hypocrite it’s what makes his character slightly hate-able and realistic,” but it’s like the author just tried to cram a bunch of different character traits they liked into a character without giving it nuance

I’m confused on the class of this world. Like why does Paul, this world’s equivalent to a fashion designer/engineer want to dabble in politics. With people saying that only the wealthy can practice cloth magic it seems like an allegory for art school or majoring in something you love but doesn’t pay the bills, how is that related to wanting to be a Mage? A major political figure?

I feel like relative evils are the norm if this society, honestly it’s taking me a back how devastated he is about the revelation that a political guy is corrupted

This MC is all over the place. Portrayed as a lowk scumbag, a preachy Christian, a desperate leechy guy, a people pleaser. And Idk if this is meant to paint a certain narrative but he sleeps with like overtly older men and it’s never treated like a bad thing? Like he slept and dated with his very much older professor when he was just a teen and it’s brushed over?

Boy and girl best friends don’t exist after all 😐

“Everything dies but some places live closer to bone”

Please please please let Vi and Cash get together and not do a random 180 and make him get with Delaney please please

“This wasn’t the first time someone talked about Armenians as if you weren’t one of them” relatable I think

The whole bit with drowning Genie in the river, the poem, the whole “promise me let’s be anywhere but here” oh my god

Can the desert girls swim against the current with nothing but the lights of carjacked pickup? Can the horse tiptoe into the widower’s bedroom and whisper apologies before daylight?

Love the attention to detail, you can see where Shorter cut Yut Lung’s hair

Foreshadowing bruh

What does penny mean everyone’s already connected him to the Humdrum? When the hell did “everyone” find out? Baz and Penny aren’t everyone.

Not to mention Simon and Baz’s weird “we have to kill eachother” thing they have going on. Why do they want to kill eachother again? I mean I get their rivals but I haven’t seen enough of their rivalry (or really understand it fully) to warrant that kind of hate towards one another. It’s so frustrating and feels so ooc. Cause what does Baz mean Simon will do the right thing by finishing him? Makes no sense

One thing that pisses me off with this book is that it feels like I’m reading the end of a series, the last book of some saga. There’s too much backstory referenced just for it to be condensed into one novel and it’s frustrating. It’s hard to understand old rivalries or friendships when their history is treated like an afterthought. Especially Baz and Simon’s rivalry. It’s so annoying.

"Beast and hateful animal. Filthy horror."

"...the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self"

"For it is within my power to save them. If only I were moved to do so, I could hold out my hand to them as they hover over the pit. I can only wonder, then, what is the sickness from which I suffer that, like some depraved deity, I elect to see them fall."

Damn.

“It is not amid the rooms of our houses and beyond their walls-beneath the dark waters and across moonlit skies-below earth mound and above mountain peak- in northern leaf and southern flower-inside each star and the voids between them-within blood and bone-throughout all souls and spirits-upon watchful winds of this and several worlds- behind faces of the living and the dead. I am not dying inside a nightmare.”

This book is killing me with its metaphors. It spends so much time trying to compare the situation to metaphors using cringe, drawn on dialogue that goes on for paragraphs at a time than just explaining what actually happens. It’s actually pissing me off so much.

Unrelated but so far all the characters have been insufferable. Why would you get mad abt ur friend going to the same college as her bf. Grow tf up hoe.

I thought this would be like a slow descent into madness. A few pages in and Agnes is willing to sell her soul to this woman for 1000 dollars and an apple peeler. ☠️☠️