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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, War
Moderate: Body horror, Self harm, Blood, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Confinement, Vomit, Suicide attempt, Abandonment
TL;DR: concept great, but execution completely did not work for me. Huge disconnect between how much I wanted to love this based on its premise, and how much I ended up disliking it.
I should have loved this: sapphic love story told in an epistolary style between time traveling post-human women as they travel throughout history to manipulate causality? Right up my alley!
Except the prose, oh godddd the prose. I've heard a certain kind of writing style described as 'window pane prose' that is clear and revealing, without putting any obstacles in the way of showing the events of the story. This book has the opposite. Vine-covered, stained glass, cracked and foggy pane prose? It's certainly more colorful and ambitious than beige prose, but this prose leans so hard into the purple that I struggled to understand what the hell the author was trying to communicate.
"We treat the past as trellis, coax our vineyard through and around, and harvest is not a word for swiftness; the future harvests us, stomps us into wine, pours us back into the root system in loving libation, and we grow stronger and more potent together."
What. What?! What does that even mean? Why are these people grapes now?
I understand that the book is going for this lyrical, romantic, lush, almost old-fashioned correspondence style, with a flair for abstract comparisons and unconventional analogies, but I could not stand it. I almost DNFed this multiple times because I had to continuously flip back a few pages and try a section again because I realized that I literally did not understand anything the author had written for the past minute. After a while I gave up trying to put a lot of effort into understanding this story and started to skim instead, because the style was so ornate and mawkish that it was like...shitty love poetry, and trying to unravel its ludicrous analogies just made my head hurt. The style went so far from clear 'window pane prose' that it felt like the prose was trying to HIDE what was happening from me, so I wandered through the story vaguely aware of what was going on but generally confused and detached. I can't really talk about plot or characters or themes or arcs or worldbuilding since I do not think I managed to read deeply enough into this book to understand what it was going for.
Props to the concept for being badass as hell, and the twist at the end using a fun time-travel trope to resolve the conflict.
Somebody out there will like it. Clearly lots of people do. But not me.
I should have loved this: sapphic love story told in an epistolary style between time traveling post-human women as they travel throughout history to manipulate causality? Right up my alley!
Except the prose, oh godddd the prose. I've heard a certain kind of writing style described as 'window pane prose' that is clear and revealing, without putting any obstacles in the way of showing the events of the story. This book has the opposite. Vine-covered, stained glass, cracked and foggy pane prose? It's certainly more colorful and ambitious than beige prose, but this prose leans so hard into the purple that I struggled to understand what the hell the author was trying to communicate.
"We treat the past as trellis, coax our vineyard through and around, and harvest is not a word for swiftness; the future harvests us, stomps us into wine, pours us back into the root system in loving libation, and we grow stronger and more potent together."
What. What?! What does that even mean? Why are these people grapes now?
I understand that the book is going for this lyrical, romantic, lush, almost old-fashioned correspondence style, with a flair for abstract comparisons and unconventional analogies, but I could not stand it. I almost DNFed this multiple times because I had to continuously flip back a few pages and try a section again because I realized that I literally did not understand anything the author had written for the past minute. After a while I gave up trying to put a lot of effort into understanding this story and started to skim instead, because the style was so ornate and mawkish that it was like...shitty love poetry, and trying to unravel its ludicrous analogies just made my head hurt. The style went so far from clear 'window pane prose' that it felt like the prose was trying to HIDE what was happening from me, so I wandered through the story vaguely aware of what was going on but generally confused and detached. I can't really talk about plot or characters or themes or arcs or worldbuilding since I do not think I managed to read deeply enough into this book to understand what it was going for.
Props to the concept for being badass as hell, and the twist at the end using a fun time-travel trope to resolve the conflict.
Somebody out there will like it. Clearly lots of people do. But not me.
fast-paced
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Average sapphic relationship
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated