criispy > Recent Status Updates

I feel cold

Well

Reading this on the Bart is doing irreparable damage to my brain; I already consider these exact issues on the daily and agonize over them, hopefully this book will help me brainstorm a solution

Insufferable dialogue. The idea is so cool and original and then it’s smothered in INSUFFERABLE dialogue. It’s like having a really good sandwich except it has mustard on it. You cant take it off the sandwich and now all the flavors are ruined. And the structural integrity. Cuz soggy

🤨

Not beating the 600-page-minimum allegations

Comforting. The stakes ARE high but I can’t grasp why they feel low. Maybe it’s because the world feels kinda cushy, even though it’s written to be the complete opposite. I’m not entirely hooked just because it feels like nothing bad will actually happen (what does this say abt me). I do love that it was written for his wife without the intention of being published and it comes through in the way it reads.

I wish someone had told me this was just like… uhhhh… terrible? The dialogue is terrible? The book itself is so beautiful and the plot is interesting and the story-weaving is beautifully done and then the dialogue takes a shit on all of it. Sigh

Lowkey the last airbender meets house of the dragon, and not a bad premise. I just can’t forgive the sarah j maasification of female-lead fantasy books 😭 like jesus christ if you tell me one more time that this woman’s heart is calloused beyond recognition and she’s a revenge-driven beauty who’s hiding her true identity from the world I’m going to lose it. I’m so sick of this repackaged archetype 😴

Aight so far; learning the author is a white lady felt like betrayal tho y r u india phishing sister #weird

I already love this so much. Inner monologue of a D1 hater.

Man. I’m getting sick of it and it’s such a bummer. We’ve lost the plot guys what is even happening atp. Also why is liesel there. I never really understood the Novik slander around her forcibly diversifying her cast but BOY is it obvious in this one. If ur gonna deliver a diverse cast of characters at least do the research to make them accurate instead of just giving them ethnic-sounding names. #bummedout

I’m on the fence about this one. I was really uninterested for the first half of the book because there was just no reason for Orion to stay in the school. It felt like a manufactured problem created to drive the plot in a direction it didn’t need to go. And when things started to get interesting with his mother, I thought we’d get a reason as to why he had to stay, but still nothing. Lot of dead ends tbh

Hmmm… idk why I don’t feel as invested in this one compared to the others! I was super excited but idk it’s dragging a bit.

Book one: El fights a maw mouth
Book two: El fights a maw mouth
Book three: El evaporates a maw mouth

Also I think what frustrates me the most about this one is Orion’s stupidity. STICK TO THE PLAN!! Things could’ve worked out so ez if he didn’t have a complex. Rip.

Every sentence is SO beautiful?? Banger after banger and they just don’t miss? I felt so inspired after reading this I jumped off a rock mischievously into the river (so cool and awesome and alluring and mysterious)

Hmm it’s growing on me

I don’t know how to describe this other than a really good dish that’s been slathered with the wrong sauce. It’s honestly such a masterpiece but every painfully-millennial comment just yanks me right out of the fantasy. It really did have to be like this?? I think there should be more to character-growth than oOoo discovering u have POWERS ooOoO. Like idk. Emotional development. Just a thought.

Lowkey eating this up

I didn’t realize how badly I needed a creepy dark fantasy book until now

Okokokok

Me when I don’t

Me when I think

World-building so good for dialogue so bad. Breaking my heart with how close I am to giving this 3 stars

It pmo that bryce just miraculously knows everything all the time. That she just connects these crazy dots behind the scenes somewhere off-page and risks her friends’ lives for an idea that sounds like such a stretch, but then it’s justified because it just-so-happens to work out for her. And when they reasonably ask to be filled in on the plans, what does she do? She calls Hunt useless bc of his war trauma 😍

I can’t believe half of the sentences I’m reading and yet part of me understands it too?? Like I get her frustration with writers who “try to make themselves and their readers feel smarter than they are” by including quirky, convoluted, artsy phrases. But also “cartoonishly racist” to the point it “defies belief” is kinda crazy like girl that’s the point 😭 sentences so wild it feels wrong 2 read