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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-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:
Complicated
Big thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon for providing me an ARC to review.
Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai is a gorgeously written debut romantic fantasy that takes place at a fairy temp agency. When it comes to Romance I am not normally a fan of office/workplace romance, but Bitter Medicine might just have changed my mind about the whole subgenre. I cannot say enough how much I adored the concept of the Bureau and all the fun and fascinating details of the fae world that Tsai developed around the most heart wrenching story of love, family duty, and self-acceptance I’ve read in a long time.
Ellie is a Chinese immortal, posing as a mediocre magical calligrapher. She’s been sacrificing any chance at joy and hiding her true magical potential in order to protect her eldest brother from their youngest brother who needs them both dead to fill the role of family heir that her eldest brother refused to take up.
Luc is a French half-elven fixer for the controlling head of the bureau whose terrifying reputation and lack of interpersonal skills have cut him off from his colleagues and left him desperately lonely. His only goals are to impress his boss enough to earn leave to pursue a curse breaking personal project whose victims have haunted him for years.
When Elle starts personalizing Luc’s glyph orders and saves his life, he comes requesting a magical commission that might challenge her for the first time in years, but at the same time could reveal her and her eldest brother to the brother hunting them.
The chemistry between these characters is electric from the first moment they’re on page together. I adored how absolutely in love Luc is from the very first page. The adoration between these characters who so clearly and deeply want to be seen and loved and yet whom familial duty and work hold back and force them apart has my whole entire heart.
Elle is such a self-effacing and yet unbelievably badass character. Luc is the unbelievable badass that you will love for how soft he can be for Elle (and also his cooking, nothing sexier than a man who can cook omg the way this book made my mouth water)
The way Tsai writes magic made my heart flutter from page 1. I could not get enough of Elle’s xianxia-inspired magic, and the oh so cool calligraphy/glyph magic. Every new and inventive use felt fresh and fascinating and yet so innately a part of who Elle is as a person. I hope to read so much more fantasy from this author. I could lose myself in her magical world for hours and I absolutely did, binge reading this straight through in 6 hours.
On top of being eminently bingeable Tsai handles an interracial/multicultural romance with so much nuance and grace I was swooning. We love a man who doesn’t tolerate racist microaggressions. The multicultural aspects definitely hit me in all the Asian diaspora feels, of having family and a home impossibly far away that you can never return to because you have been irreparably changed by leaving. Of having expectations and duties heaped upon you and feeling that no matter how much you sacrifice it will never be enough in the eyes of your family and the harrowing journey to self-love and self-acceptance for who you are instead of what you can do for those you love. I actually wept my heart out at multiple points and then had it pieced together masterfully.
Bitter Medicine is hands down my favorite read of 2022 and I already can’t wait to read it again to linger with my new favorite couple.
Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai is a gorgeously written debut romantic fantasy that takes place at a fairy temp agency. When it comes to Romance I am not normally a fan of office/workplace romance, but Bitter Medicine might just have changed my mind about the whole subgenre. I cannot say enough how much I adored the concept of the Bureau and all the fun and fascinating details of the fae world that Tsai developed around the most heart wrenching story of love, family duty, and self-acceptance I’ve read in a long time.
Ellie is a Chinese immortal, posing as a mediocre magical calligrapher. She’s been sacrificing any chance at joy and hiding her true magical potential in order to protect her eldest brother from their youngest brother who needs them both dead to fill the role of family heir that her eldest brother refused to take up.
Luc is a French half-elven fixer for the controlling head of the bureau whose terrifying reputation and lack of interpersonal skills have cut him off from his colleagues and left him desperately lonely. His only goals are to impress his boss enough to earn leave to pursue a curse breaking personal project whose victims have haunted him for years.
When Elle starts personalizing Luc’s glyph orders and saves his life, he comes requesting a magical commission that might challenge her for the first time in years, but at the same time could reveal her and her eldest brother to the brother hunting them.
The chemistry between these characters is electric from the first moment they’re on page together. I adored how absolutely in love Luc is from the very first page. The adoration between these characters who so clearly and deeply want to be seen and loved and yet whom familial duty and work hold back and force them apart has my whole entire heart.
Elle is such a self-effacing and yet unbelievably badass character. Luc is the unbelievable badass that you will love for how soft he can be for Elle (and also his cooking, nothing sexier than a man who can cook omg the way this book made my mouth water)
The way Tsai writes magic made my heart flutter from page 1. I could not get enough of Elle’s xianxia-inspired magic, and the oh so cool calligraphy/glyph magic. Every new and inventive use felt fresh and fascinating and yet so innately a part of who Elle is as a person. I hope to read so much more fantasy from this author. I could lose myself in her magical world for hours and I absolutely did, binge reading this straight through in 6 hours.
On top of being eminently bingeable Tsai handles an interracial/multicultural romance with so much nuance and grace I was swooning. We love a man who doesn’t tolerate racist microaggressions. The multicultural aspects definitely hit me in all the Asian diaspora feels, of having family and a home impossibly far away that you can never return to because you have been irreparably changed by leaving. Of having expectations and duties heaped upon you and feeling that no matter how much you sacrifice it will never be enough in the eyes of your family and the harrowing journey to self-love and self-acceptance for who you are instead of what you can do for those you love. I actually wept my heart out at multiple points and then had it pieced together masterfully.
Bitter Medicine is hands down my favorite read of 2022 and I already can’t wait to read it again to linger with my new favorite couple.
P.98
Lots of sibling drama with Elle, not sure what's up with Luc. It seems like a fine book, it's just not grabbing me.
Lots of sibling drama with Elle, not sure what's up with Luc. It seems like a fine book, it's just not grabbing me.
This book is a lot. It expects a lot out of the reader, like knowledge of mythical creatures from many different cultures. Also, knowledge of the fantasy romance genre. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, it was just like a slap in the face at the beginning. The pacing of this book is wack. I have truly never read anything like it before and I'm not sure that's a good thing. I was confused a lot of the times and the relationship at the middle of this book made no sense in the beginning, or really well into the meat of the book. I just wanted the author to slow the fuck down. Maybe it didn't start in the right place. Of maybe they just trusted the reader too much. I'm not sure.
adventurous
emotional
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I really wanted to like this book and there were elements I really enjoyed - especially the big fight scene in the middle that felt straight out of a wuxia. And I loved the concept of this world and it's magic. But unfortunately, that's all we ever got - a rough idea of the concept. And then some of the banter was fun. But other than that, this book was a bit of a hot mess.
1) World Building - nothing was explained. Bits and pieces were randomly dropped but without any explanation, it was impossible to understand. Half the time is seems like all the magical beings work for one giant agency but then other times, it seems they do not. Are normal people aware of magic in this world or not? It seemed like they weren't but no one ever seemed to behave like they didn't. Why is Oberon seemingly not accountable to ANYONE for his actions? Or Elle and Tony's brother for that matter? Laes did not make a lot of sense to me - if one cannot live without it, how did they get them in the first place? It's not like they came out of the womb holding a laes in their hand. And if they are issued at birth, why can't they be issued again later if broken? And Luc's half-elveness had zero to do with the plot other than the very odd event at the end of the book so it feels like he was only half-elven because he needed to be for that event.
2) Romance - this book tried but there wasn't a lot of foundation to the relationship so the romance was severely lacking. Luc & Elle were cute but we start the book after a year of them flirting and then suddenly they are together but since there was no build-up, the stakes and investment in their relationship weren't really there. It was basically insta-love and there were also two random explicit scenes dropped in the book that served no purpose other than filling pages.
3) Plot - what I thought was supposed to be the plot was rushed and basically over halfway through the book. And then the story never picked back up or returned to anything relevant. The two main characters spent the rest of the book whining about people pushing them around and their solution was anticlimactic and sad/pathetic. Characters were one-dimensional with not a lot to define them (Oberon, Tony almost was developed but the story stopped short of explaining his past actions, Lira sounded too awesome but I barely knew who she was, The Wrecking crew had interesting potential but they were caricatures I couldn't keep straight, etc.)
There was also a lengthy list of lgbtq characters, none of which had anything to do with actual story, character-development, or plot development, so it felt like they were there merely to check a box.
1) World Building - nothing was explained. Bits and pieces were randomly dropped but without any explanation, it was impossible to understand. Half the time is seems like all the magical beings work for one giant agency but then other times, it seems they do not. Are normal people aware of magic in this world or not? It seemed like they weren't but no one ever seemed to behave like they didn't. Why is Oberon seemingly not accountable to ANYONE for his actions? Or Elle and Tony's brother for that matter? Laes did not make a lot of sense to me - if one cannot live without it, how did they get them in the first place? It's not like they came out of the womb holding a laes in their hand. And if they are issued at birth, why can't they be issued again later if broken? And Luc's half-elveness had zero to do with the plot other than the very odd event at the end of the book so it feels like he was only half-elven because he needed to be for that event.
Spoiler
Also, I was really expecting it to turn out that Oberon was his father. Why else would he possibly be SO invested in Luc taking over the agency/bureau some day? And why did Elle destroy Tony's laes in the first place? Was it a random accident?2) Romance - this book tried but there wasn't a lot of foundation to the relationship so the romance was severely lacking. Luc & Elle were cute but we start the book after a year of them flirting and then suddenly they are together but since there was no build-up, the stakes and investment in their relationship weren't really there. It was basically insta-love and there were also two random explicit scenes dropped in the book that served no purpose other than filling pages.
3) Plot - what I thought was supposed to be the plot was rushed and basically over halfway through the book. And then the story never picked back up or returned to anything relevant. The two main characters spent the rest of the book whining about people pushing them around and their solution was anticlimactic and sad/pathetic.
Spoiler
Do they really expect Oberon to just walk away now that they are defenseless? Is Elle's brother really supposed to just happily sit under house-arrest forever after explicitly trying to kill both his siblings more than once? Is Tony going to finally start being a responsible member of society instead of running away to play while letting people die? And if so, why now instead of earlier?There was also a lengthy list of lgbtq characters, none of which had anything to do with actual story, character-development, or plot development, so it felt like they were there merely to check a box.
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
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
Oh how I adore this book!!!
The world, the magic system, the diversity, the romance
The world, the magic system, the diversity, the romance
Great characters, a fascinating setting, some excellent erotica, and a solid plot about magic, familial responsibility, and dealing with personal sacrifice all come together perfectly in this fantasy novel. I enjoyed everything from the various forms of magic to the fantastical transportation systems to the seedy side of corporate magic. A fun read. More please, and with more about the ghosts?
I put this book on hold so long ago I thought it was a YA fantasy romance. As I was reading it made sense: (almost) insta-love, two characters who are self-loathing but super powerful, self-sacrificing "but I can fix them" shit that my teenage self would EAT UP. For the majority of the book, I was vibing -- I enjoyed the superfluous cringe-y romance and inner/outer dialogues, felt like the action scenes added drama and excitement telenovela-vibes, and appreciated how (most) of the characters were good at communication despite being flawed.
However, around the last third of the book I lost interest. Elle became another "weak female protagonist" who needed men to save her(?) But also Luc was a "weak male protagonist" who needed Elle to save him(?) IDK it was too much "don't sacrifice yourself for me, too late I already did, too late I paid you back, too late I'm selfish" back and forth without any real balance or lessons learned. I had to read ahead for the last 30 pages of the book because I couldn't handle it -- and it just proved everything I thought was right. Random miscommunication was used a major plotline in the last third which baffles me considering how I was so happy that wasn't a point of conflict for the first 2/3 of the book.
However, as someone who is also Taiwanese-American, I appreciated how the author interwove Mandarin Chinese, pinyin and other languages and also made a note as to her intentionality to not have translations at multiple times with multiple languages. IYKYK. I wish this might've been explored more -- like imagine if Lucien was BIPOC instead of alive when France colonized a lot of the world? A better read imo.
This was also labelled as LGBT so kudos to some of the side characters being LGBTQ+ identified... but I think this would've been much more enjoyable (to me) if the lead characters were also queer/trans... (Also a personal issue but I'm TIRED of WMAF couples... please... no more...)
Looking back, maybe I would've liked this more if I didn't read it during pride month and I was actively searching for that GOOD GOOD QTBIPOC love.
However, around the last third of the book I lost interest. Elle became another "weak female protagonist" who needed men to save her(?) But also Luc was a "weak male protagonist" who needed Elle to save him(?) IDK it was too much "don't sacrifice yourself for me, too late I already did, too late I paid you back, too late I'm selfish" back and forth without any real balance or lessons learned. I had to read ahead for the last 30 pages of the book because I couldn't handle it -- and it just proved everything I thought was right. Random miscommunication was used a major plotline in the last third which baffles me considering how I was so happy that wasn't a point of conflict for the first 2/3 of the book.
However, as someone who is also Taiwanese-American, I appreciated how the author interwove Mandarin Chinese, pinyin and other languages and also made a note as to her intentionality to not have translations at multiple times with multiple languages. IYKYK. I wish this might've been explored more -- like imagine if Lucien was BIPOC instead of alive when France colonized a lot of the world? A better read imo.
This was also labelled as LGBT so kudos to some of the side characters being LGBTQ+ identified... but I think this would've been much more enjoyable (to me) if the lead characters were also queer/trans... (Also a personal issue but I'm TIRED of WMAF couples... please... no more...)
Looking back, maybe I would've liked this more if I didn't read it during pride month and I was actively searching for that GOOD GOOD QTBIPOC love.