Reviews with content warning for War - A Study in Drowning

Fantasyland pre-80s Berlin's xenophobia smashed together with FantasyOxford's academic gender segregation BUT NONE OF THAT'S IMPORTANT- TIME TO GO TO A DAMP, ISOLATED, LEAKY BEACH HOUSE.

Sexual assault and misogyny allergory that really, really loves aggressive and inconsistent water imagery. Buckle up for feeling sticky and coping with trauma via dissociation.

Single POV, 3rd person past tense, main characters are teen book nerds (college freshmen.) 1 semi-spicy scene.

Very strong world building. Would support this setting being used again. Likeable main characters. Plot, themes, and story structure are a bit of a mess. Action drags and we get a lot of heavy handed imagery and navel gazing.

In a piece that excels at world building, the villian [bad guy lore]

isn't really explained as an entity. Which is fine, but things are overexplained through the whole book, except for the driving force of the book.

If this is on your TBR list bc the cover looks dope or it's been on lists, I suspect you'll get as much out of this book if you read the first two and last two chapters as reading the whole thing.

[Ending] Vibewise, Reid

does a good job on the ending. The pacing is well done and you feel like this chapter of the story is done and the characters are ready to move on. Things resolve.

I expect that's part of why this book gets good marks.

Content Warnings

cordeliant's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

moonchild_cos's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

4.25

Content Warnings

kemikemi's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Regardless of however the book was marketed, to me this book is a mysterious and anxious character study inside a dark academia fantasy setting. The focus on higher education research and the Llyrian literary world, with exerpts from books, poems, and academic articles from within Llyr at the start of each chapter, reminded me of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett—another book I enjoyed that created additional academic lore to immerse the reader in the culture it was creating and further the themes of the novel. Angharad, as well as Myrddin’s poems, were written so beautifully and I wish they were released on their own so that we could read them in full; Ava Reid did such a good job with the setting of Hiraeth, its location within
the Bottom Hundred, and with the overall character that was the sea.

This book was also a fascinating character study, and no matter how many other people call her bland I will stand by Effy as a character. The beginning was a little hard to get through because her perspective was giving me so much secondhand anxiety; the description of her thoughts and feelings were so visceral and yet she also spoke in vagues, so that you could not clearly grasp what exactly was haunting her so. Once she began to reveal her past, however, it all slowly clicked into place, and from the moment she said it I knew in my heart it was all real. It’s a bit of a tale as old as time, a young woman who is experienced no one believing her for so long that she begins to doubt her own senses and sanity. Don’t get me wrong, I was very invested in the mystery behind Angharad and wanted to see what the truth would unfold to be, the most of all I wanted to know if Effy would ever get to experience realizing and proving that herself as right in her own personal story. I also don’t understand how people don’t see the romance in this story, because I very much did; it was tender and rooted in someone caring for and believing in you. Especially with the blatant juxtaposition of very masculine older men trying to tell Effy who she was and what she needed, her relationship with a same-aged peer and quiet academic felt very precious to me and I enjoyed every minute they were on-page together.

My main critique would have to be the way the events of the book unfolded from the climax to the end; when considering the pace of the rest of the novel, it did feel very fast and like so much information was suddenly dumped on us.

I did feel very vindicated, having guessed from the moment Preston said he didn’t think Angharad was written by Emrys Myrddin it was written by his widow, although initially, I was a bit too optimistic like Effie and thought that it was going to be a love story where women weren’t allowed to publish novels and so one man who loved his wife so much published it for her so that he could prove to her that her writing could and would be beloved by the entire land. The reality is so much more bleak, but in a world where sexism is so ingrained, a story about common men being commonly greedy and cruel more realistic than a fantastic love about a man who rose above basic misogyny.

However, this complaint does not ruin my enjoyment for the book as a whole, and thus I rate it four stars. I had a great time diving into this world, and I also have to thank Saskia Maarleveld for her fantastic narrating of the audiobook; I especially loved how she did Preston’s voice, and I think her voice lilting across all the Llyrian and Argantian words and accented voices really elevated the experience for me.

Content Warnings

marc_le's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

embersbooknook's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging 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? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This book was really good.
Not what I expected, in a lot of respects - but thoroughly enjoyable.
While I was able to predict some of what would occur

Angharad being the author, Ianto being the fairy king, Myrddin being not awesome, etc.

, that didn’t make it any less of a good read.

Effy was initially slightly dislikable in a really relatable way - nervous, anxious, unable to trust herself, processing substantial trauma. Thus seeking a tad flaky at first. However after about 50 pages her character growth really started.
I really enjoyed seeing her character grow throughout this book.

Preston was a really good match for her - overly sensible perhaps, which I enjoyed seeing soften a bit throughout.
It was really nice to see Effy’s degrading options about Argantians slide away as she got to know him.
A reminder that when humans get to know people who are different from them, they are less prone to dehumanize an entire group of people. A reminder we need in the world as often and as much as possible. 🥺🫶🏽

This book was a good exploration of how sexism affects a society in every level, personally, professionally, intimate relationships, etc. I also appreciated how small mentions of colonialism and sexist intellectualism, and militarism/war made it into the book. Ava set up a fascinating world and I very much hope more of these themes and its history are explored in book 2! Overall a good read that I’d recommend and will enjoy revisiting.

Content Warnings

mrsjoellebell's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

More...