Nora > Recent Status Updates

So far the story is: My god is this the most miserable and insufferable man to ever walk down Camden Road! His selfishness will astound you! He is the original incel, the first beta male. Gape at his poor life choices and misguided reaction to a disillusionment with capitalism!

Might other things happen? I’m not sure.

“Empires are founded by the travelers.” 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

Scary white woman named Polly only woman in this book with a speaking role since like chapter 3 🤨

Not Robin Wall Kimmerer making a completely false statement about evolutionary anthropology 😭😭😭😭 ultimate betrayal

Crawling through this book—the last book in the stack of new books I bought this year and need to read before 2025. It’s good, I’m just being difficult.

This has gradually become arduous—especially the humor. Get on with it…

Why am I having such a good time?

Learning by trial that I don’t like how popular science books are written, but I’m willing to meet this in the middle. (I don’t need Simpsons references to understand data.)

My silly little brain almost two years ago in NOLA thought this was a scholarly book 😭 So mistaken y’all. “Bouguille, by contrast, became even more committed to equality for Blacks after almost losing his life.” Then absolutely no discussion of how he supposedly did this.

So far, the theme of the book is that these men were “special” because they were 1) free Black men and 2) wealthy elite. The author says multiple times that they “didn’t like” white supremacist policies and spokepersons but does not show how. Waiting for this all to come together. (There’s a kind of disdain or speaking down to enslaved Black people that is increasingly uncomfortable.)

Back on my bull sh*t

Why is this so goofy. I don’t recall the first book being so goofy. (And so poorly organized?)

Oh my god… the subtle homophobia… the casual ableism… a leper is described as being “more monster than man” because he’s missing his nose and doesn’t have any hair. 🤡 Yikes!!!

Screaming and crying and throwing up

I don’t think I can do this — the way tumblr-isms are peppered into the dialogue 😭😭😭😭🤢🤢🤢 god bless

You ever just want to scream !!! How can reading this not make someone an emotional and feral wreck

Resisting the urge to line edit this whole book…. Every other sentence has some kind of passive voice: was; were; had, etc. And then there’s, “Surprised, I dropped my basket on the floor.” Just say I dropped my basket. Or even better, “The basket slipped from my fingers to the floor.”

I am very turned off by multiple pages of backstory… and having a narrator tell us “who” she is instead of allowing the reader to gradually piece together the character.

Attempting to kill the white woman who fell in love with an enslaved brown man and started wars to be with him = based.

I feel like I’ve been played. Duped. Deceived. Kestrel and Arin 🤦🏼‍♀️ of course. I’ve been tricked into reading a Winner’s Curse spin-off.

I think the prologue is entirely unnecessary. I’m skeptical of the editing decision to keep it…. It’s not like the 7 minute LotR prologue that has to set up hundreds of years of exposition. This is a single moment that can be cleverly peppered into the narrative. I’ve come out the other side very confused.

When are white authors going to learn that if you just describe the skin of your characters of color and not white characters, then you are communicating to your reader that white is the default. You expect your reader to know that whiteness is assumed. So any effort to have “diverse” characters feels disingenuous, like a pretense. Because they don’t really get it.

I actually started this last night. LOL.

Oh shit.

HEY LOOK I HAVE AN ARC !!!!

Very confused by the Kai’s ignorance of potatoes. They had food earlier on that Idilko found familiar… It’s cute… it gets old. Idk why I’m being so nit-picky this time around.

I’m just…. Very wary of the idea of the Kai’s darker, greyer skin being “inhuman.” Ehem. Ehem. 🤨 Man I love this book but white fantasy authors needs to get their shit together

No wonder my girl is depressed. She’s doesn’t get any vitamin D LOL. Do they have vitamin D supplements in the Kai world

The terrible working class dialects forced into the dialogue really gave away the author’s Americanness 😑

Rick Riordan Presents has taken pity on me and my horrible NetGalley score by gracing me with a Tristan Strong Keeps Punching eARC. Thank you Disney lol