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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
hauntingly beautiful. i just wish there was more lore/world building & clearer written scenes
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Yeah this one just didn't do it for me. It's unfortunate because it has a lot of elements that I really could have liked and (in isolation) did like, so I'm still struggling with what rating to give it, but ultimately too much of this book just didn't work in the way it was clearly intended to so I can't justify rating it higher than the 2-3 star range.
Firstly, this was always going to suffer from the fact that the last book I read was A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon, which I gave 5 stars. With that in mind, I really tried not to let my enjoyment of Shannon's book influence my opinion of this one. However, these books are actually relatively comparable on one specific point: both are fantasy novels that take inspiration from real-world cultures (even if A Day of Fallen Night is vastly different in scope and length). I understand why this book chose to do this—it’s an easy way to world build when you have a limited page count and the world building isn't really the point—and I have no qualms with this in a vacuum, but it was far, far too heavy handed. You might as well have set this book in alternate universe historic Germany with fantasy elements, which I honestly would have found more palatable than what was actually done. To me, there was no reason to create a new fantasy world when you weren’t really going to world build aside from the wildeleute (faerie-like creatures) and the magic system. These felt like they were tacked on for the aesthetic in what could otherwise have been a solidly historic fiction novel, rather than being integrated into a cohesive fantasy world, which affected my immersion in the story as a reader.
I’m aware that ADoFN isn’t a fair comparison to make, though, so I’d actually like to focus on a different comparison, which is The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso. Both of these books are fantasy/mystery combo novels with a limited amount of time to world build. I had my issues with Caruso’s book too, but I rated it higher than this for the simple reason that it managed to accomplish what it set out to accomplish: telling a mystery story centered around a time loop. This book was also trying to be a locked-room murder mystery, which is what drew me to it in the first place, but I didn’t find that particularly compelling for a few reasons (I didn’t find the reasons that Sylvia was immediately exonerated to be super logically consistent, there were two characters who obviously weren’t going to be the killers because of how comically unlikeable they were which left only two actual suspects, and I feel like it was not always clear what certain characters knew or how they knew it). As I mentioned, the world building also didn't do it for me, which leaves the characters and the romance, but even this wasn’t the most developed. Because we meet the characters in the context of the adventure, I felt like we were told a lot of information about them and their dynamics rather than being shown it. Lorelei and Sylvia’s dynamic was better, but it was hard to understand the friend group that apparently existed between the other characters from the perspective of Lorelei, an outsider, which again took away from my immersion in the book. The Last Hour Between Worlds succeeds on some level because it is trying to be a mystery novel first, and the romance and fantasy elements come up when they are relevant—even if the characters weren’t my favourite, I still had a great time reading a mystery novel with some pretty cool fantasy world building. A Dark and Drowning Tide tries to be everything at once (romance, fantasy, mystery, whatever “dark academia” is as a genre) with no clear focus, and thus does none of those things particularly well.
There is also the matter of the politics in this book. I understand that this is a standalone novel, and also a romance/murder mystery, so we are obviously not going to address structural issues in this fantasy world. The only problem is that this fantasy world is so obviously based on the real world that it feels irresponsible to have the resolution be the Jewish character attaining special status that allows her more rights and then marrying her non-Jewish love interest, without even trying to address the state and rights of her people in this world, especially when the murder of her brother is such a central part of her character. It is insane that the “right” answer is to allow Wilhelm to stay in power and support his rule in the name of stability because he’s not actively killing the Yevanische people and it could be worse. I think I can see the author’s vision with this storyline, given the interspersing of folktales throughout the book and specifically Lorelei’s struggle with only having negative folktales about people like her—unlike all the stories Lorelei has heard, unlike what she expects for herself and what she thinks she deserves, she does get a happy ending this time. For this reason, I don’t think this is a case of the author saying that assimilation is the only way forward or anything like that at all, but unfortunately I can also see how it can come off that way because it just isn’t executed well. If there had been world building that made this feel…not so exactly copy-pasted from the real world experience of Jewish people, or if this were an explicitly historically situated book where we understand that things cannot get better at this moment in time, maybe this would have gone down smoother, but it just doesn’t work with such an on the nose allegory. You’ve established that this isn’t the real world, so why do we have to accept oppression of a clearly real ethnic group here?
Despite all of this, there were parts of this book that I genuinely enjoyed. I did like the romance—I almost wish the author had focused more on this and done one thing well rather than doing several things not so well. I actually think I probably could have forgiven a lot if this was the case, and I’m not sure exactly why it didn’t feel like a romance novel when there was a good amount of development put into it. Maybe the rest of the plot was too involved on a conceptual level for the page count and distracted from Lorelei and Sylvia’s dynamic? Regardless, I liked the dynamic they had when it was a focus. The vibes, so to speak, were also very fun—I liked the idea of the wildeleute and the magic system, I feel like both were very well integrated into the dark fantasy/academia vibe that the book was trying to attain. Not sure how else to describe it, but it did work for me. I also liked Lorelei as a character a lot. Her struggle and attempts to be accepted by fitting negative stereotypes were very well written and I really felt for her, I feel like I haven’t read a lot of female characters who are unapologetically kind of mean on purpose recently and I think we need more of this.
Overall, I really wish I could have liked this book more. There are the bones of a really good story here that I think I could have given four stars as a fun light fantasy romance read with enough substance behind it to keep me interested, but something about all of its individual components simply didn’t mesh together well and made flaws in the storytelling obvious.
Firstly, this was always going to suffer from the fact that the last book I read was A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon, which I gave 5 stars. With that in mind, I really tried not to let my enjoyment of Shannon's book influence my opinion of this one. However, these books are actually relatively comparable on one specific point: both are fantasy novels that take inspiration from real-world cultures (even if A Day of Fallen Night is vastly different in scope and length). I understand why this book chose to do this—it’s an easy way to world build when you have a limited page count and the world building isn't really the point—and I have no qualms with this in a vacuum, but it was far, far too heavy handed. You might as well have set this book in alternate universe historic Germany with fantasy elements, which I honestly would have found more palatable than what was actually done. To me, there was no reason to create a new fantasy world when you weren’t really going to world build aside from the wildeleute (faerie-like creatures) and the magic system. These felt like they were tacked on for the aesthetic in what could otherwise have been a solidly historic fiction novel, rather than being integrated into a cohesive fantasy world, which affected my immersion in the story as a reader.
I’m aware that ADoFN isn’t a fair comparison to make, though, so I’d actually like to focus on a different comparison, which is The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso. Both of these books are fantasy/mystery combo novels with a limited amount of time to world build. I had my issues with Caruso’s book too, but I rated it higher than this for the simple reason that it managed to accomplish what it set out to accomplish: telling a mystery story centered around a time loop. This book was also trying to be a locked-room murder mystery, which is what drew me to it in the first place, but I didn’t find that particularly compelling for a few reasons (I didn’t find the reasons that Sylvia was immediately exonerated to be super logically consistent, there were two characters who obviously weren’t going to be the killers because of how comically unlikeable they were which left only two actual suspects, and I feel like it was not always clear what certain characters knew or how they knew it). As I mentioned, the world building also didn't do it for me, which leaves the characters and the romance, but even this wasn’t the most developed. Because we meet the characters in the context of the adventure, I felt like we were told a lot of information about them and their dynamics rather than being shown it. Lorelei and Sylvia’s dynamic was better, but it was hard to understand the friend group that apparently existed between the other characters from the perspective of Lorelei, an outsider, which again took away from my immersion in the book. The Last Hour Between Worlds succeeds on some level because it is trying to be a mystery novel first, and the romance and fantasy elements come up when they are relevant—even if the characters weren’t my favourite, I still had a great time reading a mystery novel with some pretty cool fantasy world building. A Dark and Drowning Tide tries to be everything at once (romance, fantasy, mystery, whatever “dark academia” is as a genre) with no clear focus, and thus does none of those things particularly well.
There is also the matter of the politics in this book. I understand that this is a standalone novel, and also a romance/murder mystery, so we are obviously not going to address structural issues in this fantasy world. The only problem is that this fantasy world is so obviously based on the real world that it feels irresponsible to have the resolution be
Despite all of this, there were parts of this book that I genuinely enjoyed. I did like the romance—I almost wish the author had focused more on this and done one thing well rather than doing several things not so well. I actually think I probably could have forgiven a lot if this was the case, and I’m not sure exactly why it didn’t feel like a romance novel when there was a good amount of development put into it. Maybe the rest of the plot was too involved on a conceptual level for the page count and distracted from Lorelei and Sylvia’s dynamic? Regardless, I liked the dynamic they had when it was a focus. The vibes, so to speak, were also very fun—I liked the idea of the wildeleute and the magic system, I feel like both were very well integrated into the dark fantasy/academia vibe that the book was trying to attain. Not sure how else to describe it, but it did work for me. I also liked Lorelei as a character a lot. Her struggle and attempts to be accepted by fitting negative stereotypes were very well written and I really felt for her, I feel like I haven’t read a lot of female characters who are unapologetically kind of mean on purpose recently and I think we need more of this.
Overall, I really wish I could have liked this book more. There are the bones of a really good story here that I think I could have given four stars as a fun light fantasy romance read with enough substance behind it to keep me interested, but something about all of its individual components simply didn’t mesh together well and made flaws in the storytelling obvious.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Having read four of Allison Saft's novels now, I'm beginning to pick up on patterns in her writing. This wasn't my favorite of her works (A Far Wilder Magic still reigns supreme) but I liked it slightly more than Down Comes the Night. I don't think mysteries are Saft's strong suit, so I wasn't particularly gripped by that aspect of the plot. She does a very good job at making her setting feel alive, and while I found Lorelei and Sylvia slightly frustrating at certain points in the story (especially the miscommunication near the end ), ultimately I liked both of them well enough. The supporting characters were a bit of a mixed bag though, with some being more compelling than others. Unfortunately, the murderer is one of the characters who felt flat to me, which made the story much weaker imo.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
“You're like something out of a nightmare."
And you, Lorelei thought despairingly, are resplendent.
A Dark and Drowning Tide takes you on a thrilling adventure through its own wonderful world. The story is a tragically beautiful one. However much the fantasy genre was present, it felt very realistic and down to earth. It was a book filled with magic but the characters endings didn’t have a drop of that magic. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book!
adventurous
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I think this ended up at a 3.5ish read for me. It had the unfortunate timing of reading it while in a pretty big reading slump for me (with this and some other books) and that clouded my feelings on it a little bit, but I also think I had a little bit different expectations going in. I thought this was a bit more of a dark academia fantasy novel, and it’s not really. It’s about scholars, but it’s def not dark academia. I also thought it was more of a romance than it actually was. Yes, there is a romance in here, but it’s really more of a Lorelei character study type of thing with a heavy dash of the romance with Sylvia helping that growth along. I still enjoyed it, but I wanted to like it a little more than I did, especially as it was my aardvark pick for the month, and when I buy things without reading them first, it always adds to the pressure to like it a lot.
All that said, I enjoyed it. It was my first novel by this author and is def check out another.
All that said, I enjoyed it. It was my first novel by this author and is def check out another.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book was amazing. I love all the German folklore and language use here. There is also so much symbolism with antisemitism. I truly love how much research and knowledge was put into this story.
I also love the romance. It was the perfect level of spice. The plot was engaging. The enemies definitely hated each other.
I really liked this book. I can’t recommend it enough, especially when there is a lack of wlw books out there.
I also love the romance. It was the perfect level of spice. The plot was engaging. The enemies definitely hated each other.
I really liked this book. I can’t recommend it enough, especially when there is a lack of wlw books out there.