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for a world ruled by a matriarchy there sure is a lot of misogynistic bullshit at work here

the second book is infinitely better than the first, probably because of daemon jr's minimal presence. i have taken a reluctant liking to lucivar, though i still think the histrionic reactions the men have whenever jaenelle does literally anything are absurd. why do they call it the black jewels trilogy when there are 9 more books. i am displeased with this discovery.

highlights: daemon jr tries to convince himself that he is definitely not a pedophile while acting very much like a pedophile while his brother lucifer - sorry, luciVAR - bites off his own captor's clitoris. children have been forced into cannibalism. a horse has committed suicide.

i am 100 pages in. one of the main characters is named Saetan Daemon SaDiablo. all the other guys appear to be enslaved sex workers controlled by magic cock rings. Daemon Jr is 1700 years old and the prophesied lover of a character that is 12 rn. i have had to draw a family tree because everyone seems to be related. there is incest. i have 1000 more pages of this. god help me

i never want to read anything with endnotes ever again

there are so many POVs and i can't believe they're all necessary but idk which ones are because i'm almost halfway through but we're still building up to whatever is meant to happen because there are so! many! POVs!

i anticipated disappointment and i was right. creating a brand new character to magically fix everything is bad writing. ending a series with the expectation of a whole new big bad to fight and then just... not including it(?) is bad writing. plus a little bit of queerbaiting for kicks. it sucks bc i was into the inverted angel mythology stuff but just... silly clichés and plot holes abound

did not have 'karou becomes so horny she almost hyperventilates' on my bingo card. that aside, am i reading an epilogue rn? i can't even begin to imagine how 70 remaining pages could be enough to wrap everything up in a satisfying manor

i don't know think i can suspend my disbelief far enough to reconcile the alliances or the romance or all the new elements being introduced rn

not sure how it took me so long to pick up on akiva being a not-like-the-other-girls type with his super special very distinct eyes but here we are. contrary to the author's intention i actually feel like this makes him less interesting. i am much more interested in characters making hard choices for the right reasons rather than because they have some sort of genetic destiny that just makes them different

i am bored by all this back and forth 'i love him i hate him maybe i will move on with so and so guy from my mysterious past' but i'm absurdly invested in the other plotlines now

so not only is akiva part of some sort of colonising race who keep slaves, but he also falls for one of them - and she's not like the other girls!!! she's lithe and graceful while her brethren are beastly and animalistic and surely deserving of enslavement!!! /s this is going to be one of those "love of a barbarian woman redeems otherwise awful dude" clichés isn't it

i was a little sceptical when i started, mainly because the blue-haired, tattoo covered, 'not-like-other-girls' attractive, proficient-in-combat, polyglot orphan but also only 17 years old MC is making my "did sarah j maas ghostwrite this?" senses tingle and having read some of akiva's POV i fear i might be right

the end is the weakest part of this book, it's like the author just loses interest after the death of messalina?? 20 pages to cover 5 years of marriage to agrippina and claudius' motivations are all over the place

misogyny is so funny. i've barely started the book and most of it has just been claudius tearing into livia. i wish i could quote every absurd thing written here. highlights include how she became a pimp because she intimidated her husband so much that it rendered him impotent and that her penchant for poisoning people was foretold by an old syrian chest. robert graves who hurt you

i can already tell this is going to be hard read. subject matter aside, nobody ever seems to remember to mention how gross the so called 'classics' are when it comes to marginalised people

as far as main characters go gabriel is incredibly tiresome

there's just something really funny about the westeros-verse version of the knights templar sporting a rainbow sword on their standard, riding about wearing their rainbow cloaks and rainbow swordbelts