Mahnoor Khan’s Reviews > The Hemlock Queen > Status Update

Okay slightly better. But the big realizations aren’t landing as that. And the extreme whiplash of he likes me he hates me and the fact that lore is so passive until it becomes life or death and the too-much narrative of every micro expression and mannerism

I realize what I don’t like about the writing — there is 5x as much prose surrounding dialogue and everything always reads deeper than it needs to be. Lore is always overanalyzing her own thoughts and feelings, but it is never acknowledged. It’s not a strength or show of good characterization, I just think it’s poor writing that over-indexes on descriptions and the “show” in show-don’t-tell.

I’ve been in denial of the writing since the first book, but it’s truly not great. The pacing feels like I’m watching things unfold in slow-mo. I really do not want to DNF