Bea27x > Recent Status Updates

They are entering the friends fase and seem really cute; and the mmc is cute, golden retriver level of trusting tho, polite and great with her family, but in some aspects of his life he’s baby alien just dropped on planet Earth defenseless 🤣 I get the vibe he’s really tough on other aspects tho, can’t wait to see more.

Totally a trademark MZ slooow burn ☺️ promising and it’s too soon to tell anything else

Still on Red Rising obsession and rereading the trilogy (a bit of time before the next part of the series is necessary), but the queen of slow burn and my favorite contemporary romance author is back! I have to parallel read. I mean, Kulti (my top rom com of all time),From Lukov with Love,Luna and the Lie,The Best Thing,All Rhodes Lead Here,Wait for it,The Wall of Winnipeg and Me! There are expectations here ngl

He was treating her as if she was the age she looked, and not the age she was. Assuming she wanted a father figure, when she already had two.

This second half of the book is so great. Pity that the first half was almost all wasted on just one insufferable new character.

The first half was way too centered around the new villain (well done and a threat but irritating and not charismatic or interesting enough to warrant the majority of the pages being for him) to the point that I now can't stand to have him on page anymore.
But apart from that, the story in the second half is much more exciting, satisfying and is finally moving! Also finally the main characters have page time!

Good, interesting, but not as much as the first 2, some choices feel... weird, and we kind of keep going around the same things, mainly following the villain succeeding in doing villain things, and seeing little of Victor, Syd and Mitch.
The villain is unsettling, but annoying too, being inside the head of a man who is rotten, uncaring of human life and lacking empathy, but who thinks himself good is annoying.

God! I don't care what trauma he carries, he says one awful thing after another to her, treats her like trash and has decided she's an evil liar without her having done anything, he's a piece of shit and can rot in a ditch and die. Am I supposed to ship them? From the insta attraction and the holier than thou asshole behavior?
Yeah if it wasn't clear I hate the mmc and am ranting.
This book feels doomed.

Oh no, this is gonna be a challenge isn't it? I like the story, I like the fmc, but the mmc is a sanctimonious asshole, I already can't stand him. Him being rude to her and thinking the absolute worst does not make this romance very endearing to me. He better change his tune soon or I know I won't be able to enjoy it.

There is a good plot here but it's constantly interrupted by all the uncomfortable spice. The emotional connection works, but the spice happens in moments and contexts where it makes no sense and becomes cringe. It makes the characters behaviour feel wtf. There's like 1 or 2 chapters of plot that should impact the characters and be discussed, but they interrupt it for over the top sex scenes

“I felt guilt this morning.Guilt! I used to bathe in the blood of the innocent, and now I’m worried about my cholesterol and whether the barista thinks I’m rude. It’s a fucking nightmare”

Tbh,mostly I'm here for Asmodeus and eagerly awaiting for his and Tawny story (ship ship ship) and want to get this off the tbr, but at least it's more entertaining than part 1 and Asmodeus showed up and teased his backstory

I love Xaden and I love Sgaeyl and I love their bond (the two of them and Tairn are my top 3 characters). Their story is the peak of the book, that's not in question.

“I’m the grandson of Corbin Riorson. Maxim was my great-uncle.”
She blinks. “If your grandmother said so, I suppose.”

“You think I would do that on purpose?”
Cassius and I look at each other
I shrug.“Well,maybe”
“Yeah,actually”
the callback to book 1😭

"You have a choice before you” She tosses the head on the podium and raises her other hand.In it is the Dawn Scepter, bestowing upon the bearer the right to rule Society.“Bend. Or break.”

Don't want to finish it ok, so I'll leave the last chapter for another day

“We should return to the party”
“Why?I have everything I need right here.”I breathe in the full scent of her.If it ends tomorrow or in 80 years,I could breathe her the rest of my life. The gulf that divided us is still there,filled with questions and guilt,but that’s only part of love,part of being human. Everything is cracked,except the fragile moments that hang crystalline in time and make life worth living

Cassius sees more than just the doubt in my own theory. He knows I could talk about Mustang, or Sevro, or Victra changing. Being different, but he sees the undercurrent because in many ways his thread in life is the most like my own. “You think you’re going to die,” he says.
“As Lorn used to say, the bill comes at the end. And the end is on its way.”

“You’re supposed to be on the Shout of Mykos”
“This isn’t the Mykos? I suppose I got lost. I’ll just follow you around so that doesn’t happen again”
“Sevro sent you. Didn’t he?”
“His heart’s a black little thing.But it can break. I’m here to make sure it doesn’t by keeping you nice and cozy”
Victra protecting her bf's bff

Battles are won months before they are fought
in awe of Darrow strategic prowess

"On my honor…”
“The same honor you had when you betrayed your friend…” Romulus gestures to me. “When you betrayed honorable, Lorn. My ally, Augustus. My father, Revus. That honor by which you watched as my daughter’s head was stomped in by a sociopathic matricide who takes orders from a sociopathic patricide?”

God I love that someone is telling Roque facts, he's the character I despise the most in the series.

Maybe that’s just the nature of us, ever wishing for things that were and could be rather than things that are and will be.
It takes more to hope than to remember.

“Lorn once told me if he had been my father he would have raised me to be a good man. ‘There’s no peace for great men,’ he said. I should have asked him who he thinks makes the peace for all those good men.”

Darrow's quotes always hit

“You don’t think you’ve gotten a chance to live?”
“Not proper” he says.
“What’s proper?”
“I dunno. I just want something to look at and say, that’s safe, that’s mine, and no one is going to try and take it. A house. Kids.”
“Kids?”
“I don’t know. I never thought of it till Pops died. Till they took you.”
“Till Victra you mean…” I say with a wink. “Nice goatee by the way”
“Shut up”
from 🥺to 🤣

She saw my face and dropped her blade in surrender. Reputation is a fine thing sometimes.

kind of hot not gonna lie

It’s moments like this that I know I’m not alone. Damn the world, so long as I have my mangy little guardian angel.

I'll say it again, Darrow and Sevro friendship!!!

“I will die with my friends,” Ragnar says.
I numbly let my razor slither into my hand and hold it over his chest. There’s peace at last in Ragnar’s wet eyes. It’s all I can do to be strong for him.
“I will make a house for you in the Vale of your fathers. It will be beside my own. Join me there when you die.” He grins. “But I am no builder. So take your time. We will wait.”
😭😭

“I want to believe in you, Darrow. I want to believe in what you said in that tunnel. I ran from you because I didn’t want to accept that the only answer was the sword. But the world we live in has conspired to take everything I love away. My mother, my father, my brothers. I will not let it take the friends I have left. I will not let it take you.”

Finally Mustang and Darrow 💜

“You tried to kill me. You could not. For 700 years, you have ruled, and this is all you have given us. It is not enough. Today, I declare your rule to be at its end. Your cities are not your cities. Your planets are not your planets. They were built by us. And they belong to us. Now we take them back. And if we fall, others will take our place, because we are the tide. And we are rising.”

“Do you think she watches you? From the Vale? Does your father?”
I’m about to say I don’t know when I catch the intentness of his gaze. He’s not asking about my family. With all his savagery it’s hard to remember just how vulnerable he is. Right now I’d say anything to make him feel like he’s loved.
“Yes. I believe she watches me.And my father. And yours too.”
“So they have beer in the Vale.”

“My people oppress your kind. We live off the spoils of your labor. Pretending you don’t exist. And you fight back. Usually very poorly. It’s absurd and hypocritical for Golds to complain now simply because the Reds finally started fighting well.”

👏👏

My best friend in all the worlds.He has come with his legion of empire breakers and renegades

“I gave up on you”she says softly,voice cracking.“I gave up”
“It’s not your fault.You couldn’t have known”
“Sevro did”she says.
“He never stopped looking for you.He said you weren’t dead. That he could feel it.That he would know"
Don't wanna say not even his mom loves and believes in him as much as Sevro, but come on

I don’t feel hope.
Not as I look at what they did to Victra, to me.
It’s the hate that rides
My pity was lost in the darkness

And still they do not understand,because how would a son and daughter of Gold ever know the sound of a clawDrill gnawing through rock?How would they guess that my people would come not from the sky, but from the heart of our planet?
“Goodbye,Cassius” I say. “Expect me”

I'm tearing up

“Ares sends his regards, motherfucker.”

This is music to my ears. I mean, Sevro!! Not only did he keep fighting, he also took care of Darrow’s family, never gave up hope he was still alive, kept searching for him, found him and planned his rescue. Really no one loves Darrow more than him.

Also, what a way he has with words “That cannibalistic bitch ain’t got shit. I got your family." 🤣

I know she feels what’s coming.I wonder how long she’s felt it.The strangeness of me.The odd mannerisms.The distant soul.
I hand her a holoCube.“Press play, and come in when you’ve finished watching. If you leave, I understand.”
“Darrow …”
I kiss her one last time, hard. She clutches at my hair, sensing that when we part, something will be different

I'm not even the one having to tell and I'm stressed as hell

“It’s not worth the risk. You’re set up now. She’s in love with you! Don’t lose that leverage because of a guilty conscience.”
“And what if I love her too?”
“Shit,” Fitchner curses. “Shit. Shit. Shit."

🤣I mean, I get Fitchner, from his perspective, he spent decades building a rebellion, an underground network of spies and assassins and this 21 years old is about to risk it all because he's in love