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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
A charming, delightful romp of a book. Though it starts with a tight focus on one storyline, as the book goes on it starts scattering its POVs all over the place with wild abandon. I almost wanted to be entirely redone as a wider and more nuanced piece throughout, but honestly, it's such fun just as it is, who cares?
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A lovely addition to this series but a bit predictable. I guessed some outcomes long before they were revealed.
This was so good and I loved it even more than the first in a lot of ways! Both books were so charming and funny and delightful all around, and this book just continued the story in the most enjoyable way
Slow start, but only because I had read the first book more than a year ago. I recommend a reread before the second book for the 5 star treatment.
Great story, excellent social commentary and excellent romantic elements. ( m/m , f/f and human/fairy)
Great story, excellent social commentary and excellent romantic elements. ( m/m , f/f and human/fairy)
For some reason, this book, while a pleasant enough read, just didn't capture my interest. It may just be that I'm not the audience for this story.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
My last read of 2020, and a thoroughly enjoyable one at that. 'Ordinary, long-suffering' Muna reminds me of many people I have known and enjoyed - both gentle and accommodating of the kind of adventure that their more chaotic counterparts tend to wreak. My favourite Muna moment was when she enters the hallway of magical portraits of old white men who start hurling sexist and racist abuse at them and she's taken aback because... it's honestly very embarrassing in her culture to lose control like that. Which I guess really summarises what I think Zen Cho was trying to do w/ whiteness and empire in this novel: describe the centre from the point of view of someone decidedly not of the centre, *becomes* marginalised through travel to the centre but wasn't brought up in that marginalisation, and so is able to shrug and turn away from these non-hometown foibles. Which is a pretty neat contrast to what she did in The Sorcerer Royal!
Anyway, this was only one aspect of the novel, but it's one that struck me as especially impressive. Overall a fun, light-hearted novel, and one that has unexpected resonances for me because of Zen Cho's extratextual description of her 'ordinary, longsuffering heroine, with no memories or magic'.
Anyway, this was only one aspect of the novel, but it's one that struck me as especially impressive. Overall a fun, light-hearted novel, and one that has unexpected resonances for me because of Zen Cho's extratextual description of her 'ordinary, longsuffering heroine, with no memories or magic'.
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked this better than the first one. Has a shape and charm like a Diana Wynne Jones novel -- the numinous yet intuitive magic, the proliferation of vexing distractions that all turn out to have a place in the clockwork unfolding of a larger problem, the struggle to find ways of living kindly and honestly in the face of families that would threaten or constrain you, the thematic arc of a protagonist reclaiming a place and power they'd forgotten they had -- but with a well-integrated foregrounding of PoC and LGBT perspectives that is largely absent from DWJ's work.
I appreciate the Malay rep but it’s too YA and pace slow.