Ansel > Recent Status Updates

🙄 references to uncomfortable corsets is so obnoxious, in the 1520s the women might not have even been wearing stays much less corsets which wouldn’t be a fashion staple for a couple hundred years. They’re structural garments to hold up the heavy fabrics and provide structure, it’s not like everyone was tightlacing

Calling it now (more like 10% ago but whatever) [redacted] is absolutely involved in the poaching. Halfway through and would love to have some more development w the sapphic element. Aila continues to be terrible to her only friend and unwilling to make any effort to make any other friends. Nary a thank you for everyone else stepping up to help her? Not even asking what anyone else has going on?

The main character…kind of sucks. I can see how she’s supposed to be relatable but she just reminds me of the kinds of dudes who are convinced ppl don’t like them bc they’re ~nerdy~ but they’re actually assholes. Mixed w white woman victim complex. Which maybe is the point, part of her arc, except it’s so grating this far in. Also the audiobook reader can’t decide how her name is pronounced :/

I forgot how quickly Vicky F builds a whole man in his campus apartment. it is chapter 5 my guy. pray for his neighbors

🙄 bruh you can make your point without making shit up about regency era stays (not corsets, those weren’t widely a thing yet). The regency period didn’t care about tightlacing and waist cinching. Huge historical fiction pet peeve 😒

Almost done and it got auto-returned 😭

AND ANOTHER THING there are only 2 women of consequence so far in the book, and they are Perfect Mothers and absolutely nothing else

This book reeeeeeeaaaally lost me about the 20% mark. The beginning was captivating, but the werewolf reveal was underwhelming and the main romance is Gross. I’m trying to power through bc I’ve had this on my waitlist for months. Klune is not beating the anti-native racism allegations :/

This far in I’m going to finish, but it’s so painful lol. There’s no reason for a book in which so little happens to be this long, to repeat the Greek and Roman stories so many times (like what was the point of telling the Medea story twice, did the author think we forgot?), or for the main character to be this cringe-inducingly thoughtless

We just got a really cool worldbuilding reveal and this protag is running his mouth to [spoilers] about why magical beings from another realm don’t have adequate technological advances. And it just keeps going. I’m losing my mind @ the way this is written

There’s this interesting thing happening where Wyatt seems disdainful of pregnant people. It makes sense that he doesn’t want that himself, but the pregnant women in the story are not fleshed out, basically objects. Hard to tell of this is a writing problem or a flaw of Wyatt’s - he feels dehumanized by the idea of pregnancy and dehumanizes others for it.

Author used ‘nutmeg’ to describe a character of color’s skin twice now. Come on.

It’s a short book so I may as well finish, but wow does this protag suck. The first thing we learn about her is that she’s homophobic. Casual racism and homophobia is baked into the character and because of how it starts, it’s hard to tell if this is supposed to be due to the demonic corruption or just how she is

Weird how a book whose worldbuilding draws a looooooot upon Asian traditions and folklore (see: sky burial) has protags whose names sound like white kids from Edina. But then other names are a mix of Asian and Western European.

This is excruciating lol. I think I’m just so far removed from being 18 that it’s hard to relate but the main character’s constant negative self-talk and inability to open up to anyone has me yelling like I’m watching a horror movie going ‘look behind you, you idiot!’ It’s not that it’s inauthentic, the narration is just a Lot.

Chapter 2 flashback exposition dump is a bit clunky. I wish the world-building was a bit smoother. The first chapter was also a lot of description and exposition packed between very little action that takes place over like 5 minutes. It takes 5 pages to resolve the stabbing that happens in the first sentence.
I’m excited for this book but this is not my favorite prose so far.

Reread for Nona

Reread

:/ acab

I was looking into this book some more, trying to find information on the setting, and came a cross a review/interview that rather ruined it for me. At first, this reminded me a lot of Artemis Fowl and felt that it was calling out some of the bigotry problems in the Harry Potter series. Knowing that it is an appropriation of a cultural genocide…kinda kills that. Explains some of the issues w worldbuilding too

The reread begins 🧛🏻

It keeps hitting me how much more of an impact this would have if from a trans and intersex perspective. Also if you use the word ‘orbs’ for eyes more than once I’m judging you heavily, more with each use.