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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Not my favorite read. Each chapter was a different perspective, which normally wouldn't be a problem, but when it is more than 2 different perspectives, it feels jumbled. ESPECIALLY when those perspectives are in different eras of time. I also felt like the author wanted to incorporate more Chinese lore into the story itself but ran out of pages to do so. It had a lot of potential but the execution was poor.
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Had hoped to love this one more as I always want to support stories about queer POC but this really didn't work for me. It felt so very convoluted and I found myself really only caring about the story set in the present. The two stories that were set in the past I found kind of boring. For me, this comes down to a structural issue. Alternating timelines every chapter gave this a Game of Thrones feel in that it kept taking me out of the story as I kept having to remember who was who. Think this might have worked better if it had done one of the following two things: A) have it told in 3 parts and each timeline gets its own part or B) just followed the modern day storyline and somehow weave in the other storylines in a way that feels organic. Also, the ending felt very abrupt and it doesn't feel like I got closure on any of the three stories. So, this was sadly a miss for me and proves that I am probably not the target audience for romantasy. After all, if a gay romantasy book doesn't hold my interest, then a straight one is even less likely to.
This one was pretty… odd. I liked the idea of the book, but I didn’t like the writing much and didn’t think it was well-executed, especially with the heavy-handed fruit imagery. The 4 BCE timeline was definitely most intriguing (I would love to read an entire book dedicated to just that timeline honestly), the 1700s timeline was odd in its emphasis on magic, and the Present Day timeline was childish and ridiculous compared to the other two. The ending was A Choice too - again, I would have liked that more if it’d been executed better, as I had expected more closure to the individual stories.
Also… holy weird metaphors for men banging men, Batman. Some of them had me grimacing at the audiobook lol
Also… holy weird metaphors for men banging men, Batman. Some of them had me grimacing at the audiobook lol
I enjoyed this book and honestly loved so much about it, including the play with timeline and fantasy elements. But I found it really hard to hold all the threads together. Reading it on paper might have been easier than audiobook, so I could have flipped back to remember the minor details that suddenly become hugely important later on.
mysterious
medium-paced
i fear that 2.5 is actually quite generous but there are three aspects that contributed: (1) the prose is so, so clunky and the dialogue is inconsistent (some v unnatural turns of phrase), (2) plot is v superficial and all over the place—in trying to be clever is just becomes confusing, (3) truly feel like the smuttiness of it is just not for me as an audience—there’s v little emotional core to the sex, and that can be fine but then it just doesn’t land w any sort of real impact—maybe that’s just my own preference for smut tho
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes