Reviews with content warning for Animal death - A Strange and Stubborn Endurance

The world building and depth of the characters was amazing! Reading this was like watching a well directed movie: all the pieces were there and when they get slotted into place it simply feels right, not cliche or too simple.

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srolocs's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The romantic tension in this book is so tight you could play it like a Harp
The world and character building are really amazing. I also listened to the book while reading it, the narrators were really amazing also and did a great job with portraying emotions that otherwise were not portrayed in the text.
The slow burn romance caught me off guard. The first kiss happened about

4/5ths

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esendis's review

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adventurous emotional inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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curiousarty's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

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

3.0

I really enjoyed this book from about the 10% mark to the 40% mark. The first few chapters (until the MC and LI meet) were difficult to push through, and everything from about the middle towards the end I really did not enjoy. The last 50 or so pages, I forced myself to finish and even skimmed in places.

But the reason I give this a 3.0 and noting lower is because I think most of my feelings about this book are based on personal preference, not on how good or bad the book is. I think it's a pretty good book; it's just very much, most definitely, not for me.

The biggest hurdle for me was the pacing. Something absolutely AWFUL happens to the characters every 4-5 chapters, sometimes sooner. I found this extremely difficult to deal with. As soon as I began to relax and enjoy the romance and the political fantasy aspect, someone would literally be murdered. It was horrifying. I found myself constantly putting the book down so I could recover.

The second thing I struggled with was the romance. This is really disappointing because I initially KEPT reading because of how sweet and adorable the romance was. But once the two characters started staring at one another with bedroom eyes and thinking about sex constantly, I lost all interest. A few days after their first time together (and wow, that sex scene... it was so incredibly long, almost like an AO3 fic. I confess I skimmed the whole thing), they were madly in love. The entire relationship takes place in like two weeks. It was... well, "disappointing" is really the only way I know how to put it.

The third and final thing I'll complain about is the world building. There are SO many characters and titles that I literally couldn't recall who was who. I wish 50% of the characters had been cut. At one point they reveal who they think "the killer" is, and that revelation occurs at the end of the chapter (a typical cliffhanger for this book). I knew it was supposed to be a big deal, but... I genuinely had no idea who they were even talking about. I know Vel (pretty snarky MC), Cae (macho sweet LI), Markal (bestie), the two sisters, the dad, the grandma, the grand-non-gendered person (grandma's sibling), the guard captain guy, and some girl Markal was seeing but I don't know where she came from. Oh and Cae's ex whom everyone acted like was the god Apollo come to life. That sounds like a lot of characters, right? Now add about thirty more. Yikes!

Things I did like: initially, the romance. Like, I was in LOVE! I would read more fantasy romances from this author, but I will check reviews first to make sure the pacing is to my taste.

I did like the world the characters inhabited. It was just confusing.

I love queernorm fantasy worlds; I'm queer myself. But sometimes it felt like characters existed just to be an example of this or that member of the queer community. It did not feel organic. But I loved the idea and I want more of this. Again, would read more from this author for that reason.

I guess I'm mostly feeling like... I'm glad I finally read this one (was on my TBR list for a long time) but also grateful I finished it so I can move on to something else.

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ehmannky's review

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emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I think overall this book was fine, but would be better served if people knew going in it was less romantasy (the romance is very much a B-plot in this when I felt it should have been the A-plot) and more political/court intrigue and recovery from trauma. There's also not that much magic in it either.

I liked the characters and their relationship, and I liked getting to explore a world where queerness is embedded into the society, but the overall mystery and court intrigue did nothing for me. I think many problems could have been solved had the timeline been drawn out and the characters given more time to adjust to things and interactions with more of the palace residents. Like, this is billed as a slowburn, which I suppose it kind of is considering it's over 500 pages, but the story itself takes place over 3 weeks, with the romance taking place over 1 week. Like for the reader this is a slowburn but it's still soooooo fast in-universe. And since it's such a short timeline, I truly did not care even a little bit about the reveal of who was behind the mysteries, because we really had so little interaction with them throughout the story. I cannot believe there was a villain monologue where every step of the plan was spelled out (because again, the book's timeline is so short, and there's not really any space for the characters to actually solve the mystery or learn about this secondary character). I also didn't care for how there's never any down time. Every single chapter ends with some kind of cliffhanger and interruption. Like, it got to the point where Cae and Vel would have a quiet moment and I'd just brace for someone to knock on the door because they never get to have a normal conclusion to a story.

As many reviewers have pointed out, there is an on-the-page rape very quickly and most of the book is Velasin recovering from it. And even though there are trigger warnings, I think it's important to know that this assault and his first suicide attempt take place within the first 50 pages. Like, avoid if that would be triggering.

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