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So far my favorite thing about this gory/visceral/irreverent/nasty piece of work is how genuinely unbelievably compassionate it is

Undeniably hilarious that Laurence & Temeraire & co spend about 200 pages doing fuck all on that ship, and then the second they take off for Beijing, the Allegiance becomes a key player in the final showdown of an epic pirate war off the coast of China, all relayed to us in about two paragraphs by the least important of Laurence's boy best friends

Beautiful and important that Laurence has already committed, prompted by nothing and entirely on his own initiative, to stepping up and raising Emily Roland as his own by the time he loses focus and has a consensual workplace relationship with her mother. Affairs with your boss are fleeting but adopting your employee is forever #girldad

"I'd rather a few peasants die than you, /min bror,/" Anna said. "Or every fucking peasant there ever was, if I'm honest."

She is trying soo hard to create some real moral conflict in this book but unfortunately everyone else keeps ignoring that to focus on the evil wizard looking to mass-ritually-sacrifice all their children. sad!

My favorite thing is when historical (fantasy) fiction masters the balance between basically normal people trying to lead basically normal lives in a world that is deeply, unequivocally weird. It always invites fascinating questions, such as, for example: how will the evil wizard hollowing out the warlord-turned-reluctantly-competent-baron and re-establishing him as a puppet ruler affect the fiefdom's tax policies?

"A rogue unit would have left a trail of dead bodies across this station."
I said, "Maybe I wanted the trail to start here."

The genius of Murderbot is that it can say things like this and have it be 100% effective against people who have not spent the past couple of chapters watching it valiantly attempt (and utterly fail) at tasks such as 'being in a store' and 'finding things to do with its arms while in public'

RJB will not catch me slipping again, which means this time around I'm keeping meticulous tabs on my categories of, among others, "characters who are comfortable with (weaponized) religious guilt," "characters who have been described as looking bored," and, of course, "characters who I suspect are mostly in this story due to their unique abilities to ID other key players"

Once again Din and I have the same taste in men (beautiful eyes that hold a deep sorrow in their depths)

I think I'm meant to be getting that Jack doesn't really understand how this kind of ship is usually run, but what I'm mostly getting is that I don't really understand how this kind of ship is usually run

Most unsettling thing about this book so far is its confirmation that Hoid has been unable, rather than (just) unwilling, to resort to violence this whole time

The Shinovar arc seems designed to show that there are no absolute truths and that neither Windrunners nor Skybreakers can or should claim ultimate moral authority, but what it has actually done is identify that there actually is an order of Knights Radiant who ARE the moral backbone/last bastion of integrity, and that is the Willshapers

5 books of build-up and THAT was the Recreance reveal? what are we doing here Brandon

It's actually a beautiful kind of full-circle moment that the only characters I find truly compelling in this one are Jasnah and Adolin Kholin

“I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents” the mark of a truly great book is when each chapter begins with 1-2 pages of freestyle philosophizing from the author, even (especially) when it is only tangentially related to the plot

Maximizing the number of characters getting this much-needed exposition is an admirable goal, but we have got to be way past the point of diminishing returns for how many can realistically fit into one vision. At this point it's just kind of a collaborative historical reenactment project

"We've found my father. He's in a vision."
"Good," Pattern said. "Excellent, even! Let's go murder some folks!"

Many excellent explorations of the complexities of the Radiant bond and spren relationships with humanity in this one, but What if the most special least stable girl in the world had to teach a sentient QR code how to be a person? truly has never had a bad track

If Brandon isn't going to take this book seriously (no!!! long overdue Shallan/Jasnah confrontation even after Shallan's Ghostbloods bombshell) then I don't have to either. at this point we might as well just hard pivot to focusing on the sitcom hijinks of Wit and Lift impersonating Dalinar and Navani and to be honest that might even be what's happening here

The Ghostbloods are so fun because Yes they are a shadowy pan-cosmere organization operating at an unprecedented scale Yes they are objectively a force of destruction in this story that now has access to terrifying new technology Yes they are fundamentally and lethally opposed to all the main characters but ☝️ I unfortunately read THE FINAL EMPIRE at an age too formative to not be on Thaidakar's side forever Sorry

The shower scene is crazy yes but from a Branderson perspective the (by far) wilder reveal of this section is the confirmation of casual premarital!!! Jasnah/Hoid. all part of some particularly heavy-handed hinting that Hoid is the endgame big bad of the entire Cosmere I'm sure

Murderbot taking potshots at anyone weird/stupid enough to be sneaking around this allegedly abandoned space station for any purpose other than raiding ❤️ the call is coming from inside the house

"Leave, then. But we started this. You and I. Radiants before anyone else."
"Except Jasnah. And maybe Lift. And perhaps-"
"/You and I/ were there at the start. We meet at the end."

You hate to see it but this is not how a goodbye between two people who are going to be okay plays out, not even when they happen to be the most special boy and girl in the world

Dalinar has 10 days to come up with a way to kill god ✅ Shallan needs to figure out what humanity’s crimes even were before she can begin atoning for them ✅ Kaladin-Szeth-Nightblood roadtrip to get this new therapy thing up and running ✅ okay Now can we get some listeners or Fused in here?

Non-zero chance that STORMLIGHT 6 will kick off with the Gavilar assassination from Kelsier's POV 🙏 prayer circle starts now

Truly staggering amounts of TV show consumption -> spilling deepest darkest secrets -> makeover! -> they are literally just having a sleepover ❤️

90% of readers of this quit right before they launch three!!! distinct, and to date entirely unconnected, storylines hinging on completely irresponsible and deeply unethical practices of medical science

I don't say this lightly but genuinely what is going on

Not this book’s fault, but all the references to Houses and Numbers and The Dead is soo THE LOCKED TOMB and let’s just say that’s not a parallel in which PIRANESI comes out favorably. most interesting thing so far is the journey from This is Palamedes Sextus (sans Cam) in GIDEON -> This is Palamedes Sextus (ouch!) in HARROW -> This was Gideon the First (+ Pyrrha Dve) for 10 000 years

This book is kind of like if Palamedes Sextus was the narrator of Gideon the Ninth. now where is Piranesi's mad dog of a cavalier to call him out on his quite frankly irresponsible mix of chronological notation styles

"Who are all these folk?"
"My people," Edmure answered. "They were afraid."

Ned Stark this, Stannis Baratheon that, THIS is what a lord and/or king that caresTM looks like

Littlefinger stroked the neat spike of his beard. "Lysa has woes of her own. Clansmen raiding out of the Mountains of the Moon, in greater numbers than ever before...and better armed."
"Distressing," said Tyrion Lannister, who had armed them.

I forgot how much of this book is just George's 3 favorite schemers trying to out-diva each other. Who Wants To Be King's Landing's Next Top Machiavelli