Mel > Recent Status Updates

The Obiteum chapters are becoming a bit of a chore.

I’m very much on team “Leave Vis alone and let him be a farmer.”

Screw it. I’m making a chart.

Now me is laughing at me two weeks ago for having the audacity to struggle with the world building in the first book. This is cruel. I’m obsessed with it and it’s obviously going to be brilliant. But it’s cruel all the same.

Thinking back, I should have absolutely clocked the myth/folklore/fairy tale rule of three showing up over and over and over again. Forgive me, lit degree, for I have sinned.

Aaaand the one thing I dreaded and was obviously gonna happen has happened.

Spoilers, I guess?

What the hell kind of animals are these that being saved as a puppy, an interaction that lasted all of 30-40 minutes, creates a resigned but deep sacrificial bond? There better be some sort of magical element to this thing cus if not it’s just the most plot hole riddled nonsense in an otherwise meticulously thought out book.

There were a handful of ways this could have played out and I’m annoyed because I wanted it to be anything else.

I would like Vis to abandon any and all schemes he’s caught up in with any and all parties and just absolutely massacre every single person in this castle. And then I want him not to lose a wink of sleep over it. I want him to go relax on the beach and breathe the salty sea air.

Also, this is what Pierce Brown thought he was doing with Red Rising and missed by a mile. I said what I said.

I genuinely like Callidus and I really want him to be sincere in his friendship with Vis and not playing a part for the politics outside of the academy.

A welsh inspired language appearing after I’ve been in the Roman trenches is so gosh darn refreshing 😅

Love an adult woman protagonist who is single, vocally not interested in being maternal, and has weirdo obsessions. My one complaint is I this is trying to be a classic medieval court setting but the protagonist’s narrative voice sounds like she knows what instagram is.

I have been struggling with the cast system nomenclature because Sextus and Septimus are surnames in tlt. Just when I’ve almost got it straight in my head, out pops a character named Magnus Quintas? Do you think this is a game? Am I a joke to you?

So this started with a whimsically sad vibe and made me feel like the bravest little girl in the forest and the most reluctantly grown adult…wasn’t expecting it to become And Then There Were None????

This is SUCH a wonderful concept for a story.

So it’s not a metaphor for grief. It’s just a place they used to throw women accused of witchcraft. Nice. Hope their ghosts eat everybody.

Clearly the pit is a physical manifestation of grief. I hope this goes a little deeper though. I want to know what’s in the pit. You can’t put a pit in the basement and then not let me see inside it.

Wading in slowly until I acclimate to the magic system and world building but I can already tell this is gonna be off the charts incredible. Sometimes the hype is correct.

How do we already have a Sextus and a Septimus. At this rate I’m just waiting for adepts of all 9 houses to materialize.

I’m falling in and out of love with this narrative every two chapters.

First two acts: perfection. The third act so far: feels very rushed and info-dumpy.

This was shaping up to be a five star read. Why must we always have an insufferable love triangle. I thought having a protagonist in her late twenties would keep me safe from this fate.

I was worried this would be a The Village situation and am so pleased it isn’t. I like how eerily familiar and unknown the forest feels. I love how confused I am about what I’m supposed to be afraid of. You can really feel the care put into the world and lore building and i feel like that’s rare lately. You can also feel something watching you through the boundary as you read and it’s a good squirmy feeling.

I started this for a spooky medieval horror. I am so deeply melancholy over Willem and his family. It’s horrific but not in the fun way. In the humanity’s desperation breeds the sharpest sorrow kind of way. The narration is incredible and I’m choking up at work which isn’t…great.

Rivers and Willows and songs and grammar as a magic system? Older sisters keeping tragic promises for the sake of their younger siblings? I’m in puddles. This is beautiful.

This is the best battle scene climax of a book that I have read in the longest damn time. I don’t even know where to start. Dialogue? Perfect. Action? Not overdone or complicated to the point of confusion. Multiple povs of everybody locking in and forming found family team ranks? I’m crying. Anxiety for the inevitable death of at least one of them? HIGH.

Brother Diaz has grown on me like a weed. How I love a fallen man of God. ❤️

Please let Jakob spend this entire battle just limping up and down the stairs bitching and grumbling about how vertical Troy is while the others move the fight from the tower the to the lower floors and then back up faster than he can keep pace with. 😂

I thought this felt too simple but still didn’t expect the twist. I absolutely should have been expecting some mind fuck, question your reality type antics from Megan O’keefe.