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kbowles24's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Addiction, Violence, Religious bigotry, Murder, Cursing, Injury/Injury detail, Abandonment, Confinement, Child death, and Animal death
Minor: War, Terminal illness, and Pregnancy
manaledi's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
This book started slowly but had some interesting developments and I'm very curious to see where book two goes. A fairly hit you over the head with it religious imagery on themes like separation of church and state. I thought the poison element was interesting but wished mortem was laid out more clearly.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Death, and Religious bigotry
Moderate: Abandonment, Drug abuse, Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Murder, War, Addiction, Animal death, Child death, Cursing, and Grief
cdoubet's review
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Religious bigotry, Self harm, Toxic friendship, Death, Torture, Emotional abuse, Terminal illness, Murder, Drug abuse, Alcohol, Classism, Violence, Confinement, Child death, Death of parent, Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Genocide, Cursing, Grief, Gore, and Panic attacks/disorders
Moderate: Animal death and Animal cruelty
Minor: Sexual content, Pregnancy, and Sexual harassment
jaynovara's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Animal death, Drug use, Child death, Animal cruelty, Death, and Murder
Moderate: Genocide, Confinement, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Death of parent, Abandonment, and Religious bigotry
clairew97's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Vomit, Murder, Gore, Violence, Gaslighting, Sexual content, Alcohol, Body horror, Bullying, Misogyny, Kidnapping, Child death, Grief, Addiction, Blood, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Terminal illness, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Fire/Fire injury, War, Religious bigotry, Classism, and Death of parent
krystlethegreat's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Bastian is the best fantasy genre prince since Cardan (Folk of the Air series)! He carried much of this book on his back and had me laughing so often!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book on audio - what a narrator! Each character had a distinct voice, from one narrator! A total thrill to listen to.
My only complaint is: There is soooo much going on, that I didn't get to explore each thing as much as I wanted to. Magic, poison running, catacombs, citadel, monks, Gods, kingdom, world beyond the kingdom... We get the gist of why each is important to the story, but I hope the next book immerses us in each of the areas more. (I'm in full support of a longer book!)
Overall, I couldn't stay away from this book and can't wait until The Hemlock Queen!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book on audio - what a narrator! Each character had a distinct voice, from one narrator! A total thrill to listen to.
My only complaint is: There is soooo much going on, that I didn't get to explore each thing as much as I wanted to. Magic, poison running, catacombs, citadel, monks, Gods, kingdom, world beyond the kingdom... We get the gist of why each is important to the story, but I hope the next book immerses us in each of the areas more. (I'm in full support of a longer book!)
Overall, I couldn't stay away from this book and can't wait until The Hemlock Queen!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Drug abuse, Religious bigotry, and Drug use
Moderate: Addiction, Animal death, and Abandonment
Minor: Violence
alilbitofeveryth1ng's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, Kidnapping, Terminal illness, Death, Drug abuse, War, Abandonment, Animal death, Confinement, and Religious bigotry
bluejayreads's review
4.0
I took a long time to get through this book, but it wasn’t the book’s fault. I got about halfway through it and then got in a reading slump where I didn’t feel like reading anything – even though I really enjoyed the first half of this book. But eventually I got over the slump and kept going, and of course I finished this book because there’s so much to love.
If you’ve been following this blog for more than a month or two, you probably already know that two of my favorite things for books to have are absurdly powerful protagonists and weird, creepy, and/or otherwise unique religions, the more fanatical the followers the better. So you will not be surprised to find a large part of what I liked about this book is that it has both of them.
I’m going to start by talking about the religion, because it’s foundational to the world and the magic system that our protagonist uses. First off, there is only one god, the god of light and life – because the rest of the pantheon is dead. The rotting corpse of the goddess of death and darkness, murdered by the god of light some centuries past, is buried underneath the city. Magic spills from the corpses of dead gods, which means the city is full of death magic, called Mortem – although not as much as you would expect, because an order of monks given the ability to interact with Mortem by virtue of a near-death experience are in charge of channeling it into stones and plants and otherwise keeping it from killing people. Which, despite the the fact that all of the names for people and magical forces and everything are terrible in this book, is a fantastic premise. “The gods were real and now they’re dead but their power isn’t” is one of my absolutely favorite fictional religion concepts. “Dead goddess’s corpse buried under the city” is a FANTASTIC premise. I love it.
And then we come to our protagonist Lore, who is not only the most powerful Mortem-wieldier since the necromancers were murdered, but was born with this ability for reasons that don’t get explained until the end but definitely involve our dead goddess. She grew up in a smuggler gang helping her moms move illegal drugs around the city, so she’s scrappy and fierce. But she’s actually not all that great at hand-to-hand combat and doesn’t fall into plucky YA heroine tropes. (Despite Lore being twenty-three, this whole book has a distinctly older-end-of-YA vibe.) She’s clever and fierce and powerful, but she’s also determined to survive and generally makes smart choices, which I really appreciate.
This book also gets an award for having the only love triangle I have ever read that I didn’t loathe. I actually kind of liked it. Lore is attracted to the generally kind, highly loyal, fiercely religious young monk who is assigned to both protect her and keep her from escaping while she navigates the court. She’s also attracted to the incredibly handsome bad boy Prince Bastian, who is powerful in his own way and maybe not as bad as everyone keeps telling her. There was a bit of triangle-ing and confusing pining, but I think there were really two things that kept me from hating it. One is that both guys seemed like reasonable choices, for different reasons – I didn’t feel like one was the obvious good choice and the triangle was just unnecessary complication. The other reason is that Lore refused to let the romance be any more than a background element. She is far too practical to let something silly like two hot guys distract her from what’s really important: Stopping the serial mass murder going on, unraveling the complicated plot of theoretical magic and court politics that may or may not be causing the serial mass murder, and most of all staying alive. Lore did have real human emotions and romantic feelings, but she was also relentlessly pragmatic and set on her own self-preservation, which I really loved about her.
The characters were solid, the story was delightfully twisty, the magic and religion were amazing, and the conspiracy, like a good conspiracy, turned out to be much darker and much wider-reaching than I anticipated. The only thing I didn’t actually like was the ending. It seemed far too straightforward after how complex and layered the rest of the book had been, and felt very anticlimactic. The love triangle didn’t even shake out very well because Lore did make a choice, sort of, but the nuanced relationships she had built with both men seemed to entirely vanish after the climax. Despite how much they had all been through together, they seemed cold and distant, like they were back to being total strangers again. On the whole, it felt unsatisfying.
A somewhat unsatisfying ending doesn’t negate how much I enjoyed the rest of the book, though. World, plot, characters, setting, religion, atmosphere, romance, character dynamics – up until the climax and resolution, they were all fantastic. It’s dark, it’s twisty, there’s a love triangle I didn’t hate, it’s got a dead goddess and creepy monks and creepier nuns and a massive conspiracy, and on the whole, it’s a very good book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Body horror, Gore, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Animal death
Moderate: Child abuse, Confinement, and Emotional abuse
Minor: Terminal illness, Death of parent, Religious bigotry, Vomit, and Child death
Betrayal, religious abuse, child neglect (mentions)koistyfishy's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
3 Transubstantiation Stars ⭐
Spice... NON EXISTENT
This is the perfect definition book of excellent premise, but mediocre execution.
Another way I could describe it is the book mentions quite a lot about "balancing life and death through the equilibrium of Mortem and Spiritum". Hannah Wittenn tried to balance the plot with the religious theology and lost God lore. And unfortunately, it felt as if the equilibrium was tipped into the boring side as half the time I was reading this it felt like a religious textbook that was putting me to sleep.
The book follows Lore, who "apparently" escaped a cult when she was 13 and was found by two ladies who raised her as their own. They also happen to be poison runners so Lore basically grows up in the crime scene as a spy. However, Lore has a secret that she is able to wield death magic or Mortem from birth, which most people are only able to do if they ever have a "near-death experience". So she has to keep that super secret because if they find out that she's this super powerful necromancer she would probably be murdered or sent to some burning island. One day a heist goes bad and she is given the impossible choice of SPY ON THE KINGS SON as part of the court and become SUPER close to him....or die. SO guess it's pretty easy to see what she chooses...
This book has some of the best tropes and some of the worst tropes.
The "Good" tropes you're going to get:
▹Court Intrigue
▹Romantic angst (could have been more)
▹Necromancy
▹Regency.
The "Bad" tropes are:
▹ A love triangle
▹ Miscommunication/Lack of Communication
▹ Religious Theory (it borders on SO MUCH INFODUMP)
Look, if I have to read about one more tapestry describing the Gods and what they look like and the colours that they're using and how they're painted or sculpted. Or have to hear about the Gods ascending and coming back to the world one more time.....I kind of lost the plot when those aspects were mentioned in the story, and they were mentioned SO MUCH.
I wasn't getting that pull into the writing I need with a book. It took a long time before I was actually hooked on the book because the first six chapters felt very, very theoretical and very info-dumpy. It was very difficult to follow along as the writing almost needs you to be one with a thesaurus. I love words. I love looking up the definition of words and highlighting unique words that I don't typically see in a book, but normally I only end up with about five max. In this book, I highlighted 55 words that are not common in English daily use as a result, if you're constantly looking up the definition of words, it takes you out of the story.
Another thing this book was missing is it felt like everything was very surface level and I needed more depth to everything (BUT THE THEOLOGY). The plot was very much you see what you get. The angst was there but not enough, the character interaction was there but not enough and the character development was there but it only scratched the surface of what would have been amazing!!! These characters have this undeniable feeling that they know each other, that they've got this drawing to each other...that they've known each other for their whole lives. But that isn't really explored enough and built on and it's never really explained why they're so drawn to each other.
I REALLY wanted to see a little bit more of their interactions too. Their talking...Lore actually talking to Bastian and Gabe and getting to know them. What little there was did not explain the attraction between them and why Gabe would be "pining over her" and she over him when most of the time they were literally just in the library researching books or THEOLOGY in their rooms. We had chapters DEDICATED to library research...
Another aspect that I didn't really like is the ending felt incredibly rushed and incredibly messy. I battled to understand what was going on. Everything was just thrown into the end and it was very quick with the characters acting completely different towards the end that didn't match who they were painted to be throughout the novel. The end was just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some aspects stick.
Overall I DID like Lore...She does come off a little bit as a survivor and is a little bit unapologetic in a good way. But she makes really stupid decisions and she purposefully chooses to not communicate because fuck knows why.
If I haven't made this clear, the worldbuilding lent too much on theory. And as much as there was a unique magic system, which quite frankly, I absolutely loved! The book didn't go into any reason why Lore has this ability to wield magic, and I would have loved to have that explored a little bit more to understand her origin story and where she comes from.
There wasn't much romance in this except for one kiss that went nowhere. Out of our boys...I prefer the prince (until the end) as he actually has some snark and uses words... Gabe has been through some trauma but he is a little too attached to his wannabe father figure to know what's good for him and so seemed immature...
There might be a couple of triggers in this, especially around the religious aspect, which does have quite a few similarities to Catholicism. So if you are somebody who finds this a problem, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book.
Luckily I had an amazing group of girls for the Buddy Read who helped string me along and gave me the motivation to tediously work through this book. And I don't know if I would have been able to finish it if I didn't have their motivation to do it.
The vibes were there...so ultimately I'm not sad that I picked up this book. I will pick up book two because I am intrigued enough to see where it goes. But if she doesn't kiss one of these boys within the first three chapters, I tap out!!!
Spice... NON EXISTENT
This is the perfect definition book of excellent premise, but mediocre execution.
Another way I could describe it is the book mentions quite a lot about "balancing life and death through the equilibrium of Mortem and Spiritum". Hannah Wittenn tried to balance the plot with the religious theology and lost God lore. And unfortunately, it felt as if the equilibrium was tipped into the boring side as half the time I was reading this it felt like a religious textbook that was putting me to sleep.
The book follows Lore, who "apparently" escaped a cult when she was 13 and was found by two ladies who raised her as their own. They also happen to be poison runners so Lore basically grows up in the crime scene as a spy. However, Lore has a secret that she is able to wield death magic or Mortem from birth, which most people are only able to do if they ever have a "near-death experience". So she has to keep that super secret because if they find out that she's this super powerful necromancer she would probably be murdered or sent to some burning island. One day a heist goes bad and she is given the impossible choice of SPY ON THE KINGS SON as part of the court and become SUPER close to him....or die. SO guess it's pretty easy to see what she chooses...
This book has some of the best tropes and some of the worst tropes.
The "Good" tropes you're going to get:
▹Court Intrigue
▹Romantic angst (could have been more)
▹Necromancy
▹Regency.
The "Bad" tropes are:
▹ A love triangle
▹ Miscommunication/Lack of Communication
▹ Religious Theory (it borders on SO MUCH INFODUMP)
Look, if I have to read about one more tapestry describing the Gods and what they look like and the colours that they're using and how they're painted or sculpted. Or have to hear about the Gods ascending and coming back to the world one more time.....I kind of lost the plot when those aspects were mentioned in the story, and they were mentioned SO MUCH.
I wasn't getting that pull into the writing I need with a book. It took a long time before I was actually hooked on the book because the first six chapters felt very, very theoretical and very info-dumpy. It was very difficult to follow along as the writing almost needs you to be one with a thesaurus. I love words. I love looking up the definition of words and highlighting unique words that I don't typically see in a book, but normally I only end up with about five max. In this book, I highlighted 55 words that are not common in English daily use as a result, if you're constantly looking up the definition of words, it takes you out of the story.
Another thing this book was missing is it felt like everything was very surface level and I needed more depth to everything (BUT THE THEOLOGY). The plot was very much you see what you get. The angst was there but not enough, the character interaction was there but not enough and the character development was there but it only scratched the surface of what would have been amazing!!! These characters have this undeniable feeling that they know each other, that they've got this drawing to each other...that they've known each other for their whole lives. But that isn't really explored enough and built on and it's never really explained why they're so drawn to each other.
I REALLY wanted to see a little bit more of their interactions too. Their talking...Lore actually talking to Bastian and Gabe and getting to know them. What little there was did not explain the attraction between them and why Gabe would be "pining over her" and she over him when most of the time they were literally just in the library researching books or THEOLOGY in their rooms. We had chapters DEDICATED to library research...
Another aspect that I didn't really like is the ending felt incredibly rushed and incredibly messy. I battled to understand what was going on. Everything was just thrown into the end and it was very quick with the characters acting completely different towards the end that didn't match who they were painted to be throughout the novel. The end was just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some aspects stick.
Overall I DID like Lore...She does come off a little bit as a survivor and is a little bit unapologetic in a good way. But she makes really stupid decisions and she purposefully chooses to not communicate because fuck knows why.
If I haven't made this clear, the worldbuilding lent too much on theory. And as much as there was a unique magic system, which quite frankly, I absolutely loved! The book didn't go into any reason why Lore has this ability to wield magic, and I would have loved to have that explored a little bit more to understand her origin story and where she comes from.
There wasn't much romance in this except for one kiss that went nowhere. Out of our boys...I prefer the prince (until the end) as he actually has some snark and uses words... Gabe has been through some trauma but he is a little too attached to his wannabe father figure to know what's good for him and so seemed immature...
There might be a couple of triggers in this, especially around the religious aspect, which does have quite a few similarities to Catholicism. So if you are somebody who finds this a problem, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book.
Luckily I had an amazing group of girls for the Buddy Read who helped string me along and gave me the motivation to tediously work through this book. And I don't know if I would have been able to finish it if I didn't have their motivation to do it.
The vibes were there...so ultimately I'm not sad that I picked up this book. I will pick up book two because I am intrigued enough to see where it goes. But if she doesn't kiss one of these boys within the first three chapters, I tap out!!!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Death, and Animal death
Moderate: Blood and Religious bigotry
Minor: War
moonchild_cos's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
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
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Violence, Body horror, and Death
Moderate: Child death, Religious bigotry, Murder, and War
Minor: Addiction, Alcohol, Genocide, Vomit, Grief, Sexual content, and Death of parent