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talonsontypewriters's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Murder, Gore, Fire/Fire injury, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Chronic illness, Animal death, Mental illness, Gun violence, Sexual content, Grief, and Confinement
Minor: Cannibalism, Death of parent, Sexual assault, and Vomit
carol_3927's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
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
5.0
This is one of the best books I’ve read. I was hesitant going in because of mixed reviews but I was hooked within the first few chapters. The different POVs from the main characters are done so well! I’d have to say I definitely felt more engaged with the Aranth side of the story but both were amazing. I can’t wait to read the second one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Emotional abuse and Physical abuse
Minor: Violence, Death, and Cursing
moon's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
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
3.5
i had trouble getting through the first half of the book because the pov changes with every chapter and it broke my flow and concentration every time but after the pacing picked up in the second half, i breezed through it with ease.
the premise is very intriguing and unique, but i have to admit that it took till more than halfway through the book for me to get a decent grasp on the world-building and lore. the logistics of magic and how it worked in their world was so vague and poorly explained that if you ask me right now how gates and patterns are utilised, i would struggle to tell you.
that said, it was very easy for me to grow attached to the main characters. well, most of them. arjun and haidee were my favourite and while i know they're the least angsty/complicated pair of them, i loved how their characters grew and developed as the plot progressed. i also appreciated tian lan's complexity, but odessa on the other hand...it was cool seeing how her inner thoughts and morals gradually devolved as the ritual transformed her, but i feel that her character arc was very hastily concluded with no attention brought to the consequences or implications of her earlier actions. hopefully this will be addressed in the sequel.
the never tilting world is by no means perfect but i enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading the sequel.
the premise is very intriguing and unique, but i have to admit that it took till more than halfway through the book for me to get a decent grasp on the world-building and lore. the logistics of magic and how it worked in their world was so vague and poorly explained that if you ask me right now how gates and patterns are utilised, i would struggle to tell you.
that said, it was very easy for me to grow attached to the main characters. well, most of them. arjun and haidee were my favourite and while i know they're the least angsty/complicated pair of them, i loved how their characters grew and developed as the plot progressed. i also appreciated tian lan's complexity, but odessa on the other hand...
the never tilting world is by no means perfect but i enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading the sequel.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Murder, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Animal death, Grief, Physical abuse, and Sexual assault
Minor: Cannibalism and Vomit
lesbian main character, chinese lesbian main character, disabled south asian main characterbluejayreads's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
4.0
I am having a really hard time figuring out what to say about this book. I think it's a case of my experieincing self and remembering self differing - I very much enjoyed this book while reading, but looking back I'm having a hard time saying exactly why. I think I mainly enjoyed the world and the plot and the creative mythology involved, because trying to write about the characters, I'm realizing that in retrospect they're all pretty bland.
There are four alternating perspectives in this book - Haidee and Odessa, the young goddesses, and Arjun and Lan, the goddesses' love interests and traveling companions.
Odessa, the goddess of the eternal night side of the planet, is the most memorable because of the great first-person narration of a character going mad. She's not unlikeable at the beginning - when the book opens, she's sheltered, bookish, trying to rebel a little against her mother's control, and not at all sure what to do about her crush on Lan. But Rin Chupeco does an absolutely stunning job with first-person narration of a person losing her self and not even realizing as she becomes darker and more unhinged. She became not at all likeable as a person but absolutely compelling as a character.
Lan, Odessa's love interest and one of her traveling companions, is traumatized. I really can't remember much else about her. Well, that and she's there to provide perspective to how unhinged Odessa gets as the story progresses. Lan led an exploring expedition, everyone except her died, and she has a lot of trauma around that. The trauma is handled really well, but it also seems to be her main personality trait.
Haidee, the goddess on the eternal day side of the planet, is Odessa's complete opposite. She enjoys engineering and mechanical tinkering, is full of compassion for everything and everyone, and embodies the bright sunniness of her side of the planet without going over the line into scorching desert. She wasn't a stand-out character, but she was definitely likeable - not a fascinating person or a charismatic personality, but honestly the only character in the book that I would want to be friends with.
Arjun, Haidee's traveling companion, was definitely the weakest of the four perspectives. That doesn't mean that he was bad, I just found him less compelling. He was a lot of the "orphan grows up with a bunch of other orphans raised by one adult and gets good at fighting and living a hardscrabble life" stereotype, with a few interesting additions that just barely keep him from being cardboard. He didn't have much motivation, though, which I think is why he was the least compelling. I also think his perspective got the least page time, but I didn't count pages to see if that was accurate.
I didn't hate any of these characters, but it was really the concepts that made me enjoy the reading experience. The magic system is really interesting (even if I didn't fully understand it), I loved the idea that the world is ruled by women who are supremely powerful goddesses and yet are mortal and every so often must be replaced by their daughters, and there are a lot more layers around the Breaking - when the world stopped spinning and divided into two kingdoms of eternal day and eternal night - and how it happened than appear on the surface. Even the settings are interesting, from a frozen fortress to seas full of krakens, golden cities protected by glass domes to creatures swimming through oceans of sand instead of water, there are a lot of really fascinating and creative fantasy things in this world. For me, the characters were more of a vehicle to explore this world and uncover its secrets, and that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Reading book two isn't high on my priority list, but I do intend to get to it eventually. The characters weren't stellar, but they were perfectly okay, and I wouldn't object to spending another book with them, especially since I have so many unanswered questions about what happened to break the world and what secrets Odessa and Haidee's mothers are hiding. And the broken world was such a cool setting, I'm excited to explore it more in book two.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, and Sexual content
Moderate: Emotional abuse and Physical abuse
Minor: Chronic illness and Sexual assault
booksthatburn's review
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
THE NEVER TILTING WORLD is a journey fantasy told by four sides as two separated sisters and their companions travel to the rift at the heart of their world to try and fix their parents' mistakes.
I like the world building, so much is shaped by the central conceit that something went wrong a decade and a half ago and the planet stopped spinning. I would like to know how gravity is still functioning, but other than that it has an internal logic that was pretty easy to follow. I like the magic system, there's enough information for it to make sense but it's not overexplained. I love this premise, and I love how it's carried out. The price of the gifts was a nice touch, the effects begin subtly and then cause a dramatic turn in the plot, making it clear both why anyone ever would have thought accepting them was fine, and how (from my perspective, at least) it's not worth it.
The four main characters all felt very distinct from each other, with different things they wanted, and many differences in what they were willing to give up and what they sought to protect. They had four very different backgrounds and it's shown well. I felt like I had room to like the book without liking all four main characters. I loved one, liked two, and have complex thoughts about the last one. That character undergoes a gradual change in mental state, it’s very well written. It’s marked by certain milestones, specific plot events that cause it to progress. It wasn’t until several of them it happened that I realized the shift they have been building, but when I looked back I could see its early stages. I love stories where a character undergoes a drastic change in how they perceive the world and interact with it, and this did a great job of portraying that shift. I liked how they were written, and my complex feelings come from initially loving them, feeling strange as their personality shifted to be wholly unlikeable, then realizing that it was shifting due to events in the story. At that point I didn't resume liking them as a person, but I love how they're written. I like the pair journeying in the desert the best, their duo was more relatable to me but one of the strengths of this book is that, as I said the main characters are so different that you'll probably like at least one of them, and the narrative doesn't hinge on whether you like all four of them as people.
The ending was good, it does make me want to read part two, and given that this is a duology the second half of the story is waiting in the sequel. It felt a little abrupt, but the characters both literally and emotionally arrived at a place that made sense as the ending before the next book. Sometimes duologies can feel like two intertwined stand-alone books, and sometimes they feel like a larger work split in two. This is very much that second type, I don't know if my impression will change once I read the sequel.
I like the world building, so much is shaped by the central conceit that something went wrong a decade and a half ago and the planet stopped spinning. I would like to know how gravity is still functioning, but other than that it has an internal logic that was pretty easy to follow. I like the magic system, there's enough information for it to make sense but it's not overexplained. I love this premise, and I love how it's carried out. The price of the gifts was a nice touch, the effects begin subtly and then cause a dramatic turn in the plot, making it clear both why anyone ever would have thought accepting them was fine, and how (from my perspective, at least) it's not worth it.
The four main characters all felt very distinct from each other, with different things they wanted, and many differences in what they were willing to give up and what they sought to protect. They had four very different backgrounds and it's shown well. I felt like I had room to like the book without liking all four main characters. I loved one, liked two, and have complex thoughts about the last one. That character undergoes a gradual change in mental state, it’s very well written. It’s marked by certain milestones, specific plot events that cause it to progress. It wasn’t until several of them it happened that I realized the shift they have been building, but when I looked back I could see its early stages. I love stories where a character undergoes a drastic change in how they perceive the world and interact with it, and this did a great job of portraying that shift. I liked how they were written, and my complex feelings come from initially loving them, feeling strange as their personality shifted to be wholly unlikeable, then realizing that it was shifting due to events in the story. At that point I didn't resume liking them as a person, but I love how they're written. I like the pair journeying in the desert the best, their duo was more relatable to me but one of the strengths of this book is that, as I said the main characters are so different that you'll probably like at least one of them, and the narrative doesn't hinge on whether you like all four of them as people.
The ending was good, it does make me want to read part two, and given that this is a duology the second half of the story is waiting in the sequel. It felt a little abrupt, but the characters both literally and emotionally arrived at a place that made sense as the ending before the next book. Sometimes duologies can feel like two intertwined stand-alone books, and sometimes they feel like a larger work split in two. This is very much that second type, I don't know if my impression will change once I read the sequel.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Animal death, Blood, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Kidnapping, Mental illness, and Vomit
Minor: Cannibalism, Sexual assault, and Sexual content
achingallover's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
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? Yes
1.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Bullying, Chronic illness, Death, Emotional abuse, Murder, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, and Violence
kait_sixcrowsbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
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
Representation:
- MC with PTSD
- Sapphic MCs
- Characters of color
- F/f relationship
Y’all, I don’t know what to say. This is my first Rin Chupeco book, and I am blown away. The characters, their development, and their relationships with the others (both good and bad)? Amazing. The world-building? Phenomenal. The plot? Superb. The way the story was told, with an unreliable narrator and the author giving us just enough information to want more, was equal parts infuriating (in a good way!) and stunning. Seeing everything come together at the end made me wiggle around in my seat as I ate up the last 100 pages.
Be mindful of the trigger/content warnings, and if you’re able to, I would definitely recommend this!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Gore, and Death
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Physical abuse
Minor: Sexual assault
kazkae's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Sexual content
Moderate: Chronic illness, Death, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, and Toxic relationship
Minor: Cannibalism
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