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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
Couldn’t get into the writing style and struggled to stay in the story.
I didn't like that the author used blatant exposition for the pronouns. I myself am non binary, but introducing pronouns RIGHT AFTER a character introduced seemed a little like lazy writing. I personally like when we learn of how a world handles gender through reading and finding out, rather than blatant "This is Character X, who uses he/him pronouns."
adventurous
tense
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
The way the book was described as a joan of arc retelling is true but, as a different reviewer said, i wish i hadn’t been told that
the holy stones are a very cool idea however i found Misery to be not only an unlikeable MC but also like they weren’t writtten/fleshed out before the book published. This book was a slog the whole time until I gave up and I only really perked up when Misery got the team - after that it fell off again
it’s hard to understand Misery’s actions because I feel like at the beginning I can follow along fine and her actions make sense but like halfway through it flips and suddenly you can’t even justify their impulsiveness for whatever the heck Misery is doing on any one page, it just didn’t flow well
the holy stones are a very cool idea however i found Misery to be not only an unlikeable MC but also like they weren’t writtten/fleshed out before the book published. This book was a slog the whole time until I gave up and I only really perked up when Misery got the team - after that it fell off again
it’s hard to understand Misery’s actions because I feel like at the beginning I can follow along fine and her actions make sense but like halfway through it flips and suddenly you can’t even justify their impulsiveness for whatever the heck Misery is doing on any one page, it just didn’t flow well
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was billed as “Joan of Arc but she’s lying and it’s sci-fi”, and I think I would’ve had a better time without that.
I also think the author is writing beyond their skill level, it’s trying to be complex and ambiguous and mostly just comes off as annoying and smug.
Plot is intriguing, some (but not all) characters are complex, varied mental states are shown in ways that sf/f doesn’t always try to…but it never quite lives up to its ideas.
DNF at 84%. misery is so insufferable. The book started out with a lot of promise but it just got worse the longer it got. It does weird things with POV, like it’s sometimes third person limited, sometimes it’s third person omniscient? And it seems like it’s for effect but it is actually just super inconsistent and you can’t always tell what Misery thinks versus what the ?angel? telling the story is thinking? (Second issue, the bit of whatever it is telling the story seems to exist just to justify the horrible things Misery is doing)
Anyways Misery started out sometimes hating religion sometimes commenting on how badly other people are following it?And then all of a sudden they’re the Messiah and they definitely had all of these thoughts all along? And they go extremist REAL QUICK like jumping to kill all heretics, torture heretics and these are presented with no kind of hey this is actually bad and I feel like by 84% into this book there should maybe be some challenging of the genocidal tendencies of Misery and everyone else.
The voice is super weird cause it changes from a really sophisticated and high fantasy sounding voice to the completely normal way the characters speak but also because of the POV swings sometimes the narration is very proper and sometimes when it’s showing Misery’s thoughts is very plain. Think Gideon in Gideon the Ninth but done with none of the skill.
This does not feel like an adult book besides the fact that there so much sex (sometimes fade to black sometimes not? Also why did we have a heart to heart about bonds made through orgies that turn into grief when said orgy members are killed WHILE the characters were having a threesome??? Very strange) anyways, it has the tone and plot of a YA book in a bad way.
God this is so long. Final issue, it seems like the narrator is trying to set up Misery for a redemption arc but I’m sorry their actions are not redeemable they sick so much.
One final thing, the pronouns were not hard to follow but they were interested in the MOST jarring, story breaking way.
Anyways Misery started out sometimes hating religion sometimes commenting on how badly other people are following it?
The voice is super weird cause it changes from a really sophisticated and high fantasy sounding voice to the completely normal way the characters speak but also because of the POV swings sometimes the narration is very proper and sometimes when it’s showing Misery’s thoughts is very plain. Think Gideon in Gideon the Ninth but done with none of the skill.
This does not feel like an adult book besides the fact that there so much sex (sometimes fade to black sometimes not? Also why did we have a heart to heart about bonds made through orgies that turn into grief when said orgy members are killed WHILE the characters were having a threesome??? Very strange) anyways, it has the tone and plot of a YA book in a bad way.
God this is so long. Final issue, it seems like the narrator is trying to set up Misery for a redemption arc but I’m sorry their actions are not redeemable they sick so much.
One final thing, the pronouns were not hard to follow but they were interested in the MOST jarring, story breaking way.
i am going to start this review by stating everything about this book that i actually enjoyed, so you understand this is not blind rage but rather a calculated rage state. neon yang, you seem like a really cool person, i am so sorry that i hated your book so much.
1. all of the holystone stuff was honestly really cool. i liked the manipulation of types of rock, and the way that different stones had different purposes. still dont really get why misery could manipulate it if she wasn't void mad nor a saint, but i also stopped really paying attention less than halfway through. could've been her mother's amulet. she could just be """special!!!""" like that. idk, idgaf.
2. queernorm is always a favorite of mine, but it was done a little bit clumsily. i liked the single conversation where misery explained why they use she/they pronouns, and the social circumstances where each *would* be used. i get its written for a modern nonqueernorm audience, but i feel like there was a less awkward way to go about it than introducing each character with their pronouns???? but im not the writer .
3. the potential for the worldbuilding is really cool. i touched on this with the holystone thing, but i wouldve loved to know more about the heretics and what happened there, especially with the fact that jericho is a non-voidmad heretic??
OK. NOW:
this book was pitched to me as joan of arc meets pacific rim in space. this is, objectively, badass. i love the idea of a not-so-sane protagonist having to pilot a mech in tandem with another person, but i guess i could skip the single savior aspect of the joan of arc story but idk, real life joan of arc was cool. THIS DOES NOT END UP BEING THE CASE. THE ONLY THING I CAN SAY FOR CERTAIN ABOUT THIS BOOK IS THAT PARTS OF IT TAKE PLACE IN SPACE.
MISERY NOMAKI WAS AN OBNOXIOUS PROTAGONIST. I CAN EXCUSE HER BEING A TERRIBLE PERSON, BECAUSE THAT CAN BE NARRATIVELY JUSTIFIED THROUGH A COMPLEX STORY (and when i say narratively justified i mean like, a character doesn't have to be a good person just because they are the protagonist. protagonist doesn't mean good just because there's a pro there, it just means the character we follow) BUT THE STORY IS NOWHERE NEAR COMPLEX ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY THE WAY IT TREATS BASICALLY EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN IT.
almost every single not-five star review of this book that i have seen discusses how this book treats the supporting cast. i will extend the argument of how it treats the supporting cast to how it treats misery as well.
characters are introduced in order to provide some sort of scratching post for miesry. nobody gets any development, and characters change not because things happen to them but because the story decides something needs to change to make sense. this would be fine if there was not a massive supporting cast introduced, one that was narratively implied to be a very interesting and important group of people. hey, im no writer, but i think if you introduce a whole team of characters for the protagonist to fight with, you have to actually make them into interesting people! but they just served as a group for misery to be better than! or to have one conversation with explaining their tragic backstory in order to justify the protagonist's hatred of the heretics! (SERIOUSLY WHAT WAS UP WITH THE SPIDER (SPYDER?? I LISTENED TO THIS BOOK DIDNT READ IT) THING. SHE HAS A THREESOME WITH HIM JUST SO WE CAN LEARN HIS TRAGIC BACKSTORY AND THEN WE NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN???? AND TO JUSTIFY MISERY LATER TORTURING A CHARACTER ???????? WTF.)
another thing is how much i disliked the evolution of lightning and misery's relationship. it feels like because they were supposed to be together they got together, not that there was an actual reason for the development.
misery herself has the most nonsensical character development too!! she goes from sewer rat to messiah (she seems convinced shes lying about that the whole time??? even though why would she be lying when she can do all of these messiah type things??) and then when her savior-ship is justified, the protolyzing (because, of course, she protolyzed and preached even before she knew whatever was going on with her was legit. and then it got worse).... even though this just like. doesnt make sense for her development. it's awkward as hell.
now i may just be someone who hates "the chosen one" trope -- except, if it is done well, i can appreciate it. luke skywalker! duck newton (a deep cut i know)! the avatar! she-ra! im going to stop scrolling through the tv tropes page of chosen ones now! but misery nomaki is a nonsensical chosen one. i dont understand why she is doing it at all. like we're told shes chosen by the spooky purple prose third person nonsense, and everyone seems to go with it, but like....?? did i just miss something?? she seems like shes chosen literally just because she has her mothers amulet. whatever. it was really annoying. favorite part of the whole chosen one thing is, when she was convinced she was still lying and voidmad, she decided that yelling at people for being heretics and then killing thousands of people was the move.... and it worked!!! she had zero lasting consequences for mass murder!!!!!!!
oh my god re: misery being a terrible person. can we talk about the jericho thing.
so misery has dreams about a figure she's convinced is a delusion. she proceeds to have a LOT of sex with this man in her dreams. i interpreted this sex as quite frankly being strongly coerced on her side - she just demands this man have sex with her and keeps doing it!! what!!
AND. when she learns this man is a real person, a POW from the enemy encampment... her reaction is.... TO GET SO MAD AT THIS MAN FOR "MANIPULATING HER" THAT SHE TAKES CHARGE IN HIS TORTURE, FORCING HIM TO REVEAL EXACTLY HOW TO SLAUGHTER THOUSANDS OF HIS PEOPLE. now maybe i just watched jacob gellers cod torture video and the blase treatment of torture in the public eye is on my mind, but EVERYONE IS WAY TOO CHILL ABOUT THIS. can you imagine how this would be treated if the situation was flipped and the protagonist was a white dudeman and not a nonbinary girlboss, and the white dudeman coerecd a woman into having repeated sex with him, and then proceeded to torture her after learning that she was a real person????? AND THAT THE NARRATIVE WOULD PROCEED TO TREAT THIS MAN AS THE MORAL HIGH GROUND?????????
the narrative is structured in a way that implies that misery is right in everything she does. as the savior, she is justified in every choice she makes, and the flowery purple prose discussing how wonderful they are and how fantastic this savior's origin story is further justifies it.
hey, you can just make your protagonist the villain. no one is stopping you from doing that. this would be slightly better if she was just the villain, and not the chosen one savior of the whatever the hell the side we're supposed to be on was.
ok i feel like there was something else i was mad about. uhhh
YES.
OK THIS IS A NITPICK BUT ITS NOT PACIFIC RIM, ITS JUST MECHA. PACIFIC RIM == TWO PEOPLE PILOTING A MECH TOGETHER THROUGH THE POWER OF LOVE AND MENTAL COMPATIBILITY.
MECHA = SOMEONE PILOTING A GIANT MECH. THIS IS BARELY MECHA AT THAT.
this book was not bad because it was written poorly. it was bad because it treats the plot and characters nonsensically, while the audience is supposed to treat the objectively terrible things that are happening as good because the chosen one was doing them. it is bad because the chosen one protagonists' position as the chosen one was never truly justified. if misery was actually genuinely insane, this would have been incredibly interesting. i would have enjoyed that a lot! but turns out that everything she experiences is because she is special and can do no wrong. this book ends on a cliffhanger, but i will admit that the cliffhanger of misery being put in prison while the royal family orchestrates a truce with the heretics is actually the perfect ending of this book. i will almost certainly not finish reading this series, even if just to figure out if misery's true position as the series villain is ever revealed. but that seems like a twist too obvious yet complicated to be truly ever realized.
(i am going to, at the end, acknowledge that i have a pretty severe anti-religious bias. i don't like blind faith. it is a thing that irks me on a personal and logical level. i think the moment i truly gave up on ever liking this book was the second the heretics were described as terrible because their faction split off because of a desire to understand the scientific underpinnings of the angels and whatever. like thats what i LIKE. AND YOURE MAKING THEM OUT AS THE VILLAINS. ugh. w/e.)
1. all of the holystone stuff was honestly really cool. i liked the manipulation of types of rock, and the way that different stones had different purposes. still dont really get why misery could manipulate it if she wasn't void mad nor a saint, but i also stopped really paying attention less than halfway through. could've been her mother's amulet. she could just be """special!!!""" like that. idk, idgaf.
2. queernorm is always a favorite of mine, but it was done a little bit clumsily. i liked the single conversation where misery explained why they use she/they pronouns, and the social circumstances where each *would* be used. i get its written for a modern nonqueernorm audience, but i feel like there was a less awkward way to go about it than introducing each character with their pronouns???? but im not the writer .
3. the potential for the worldbuilding is really cool. i touched on this with the holystone thing, but i wouldve loved to know more about the heretics and what happened there, especially with the fact that jericho is a non-voidmad heretic??
OK. NOW:
this book was pitched to me as joan of arc meets pacific rim in space. this is, objectively, badass. i love the idea of a not-so-sane protagonist having to pilot a mech in tandem with another person, but i guess i could skip the single savior aspect of the joan of arc story but idk, real life joan of arc was cool. THIS DOES NOT END UP BEING THE CASE. THE ONLY THING I CAN SAY FOR CERTAIN ABOUT THIS BOOK IS THAT PARTS OF IT TAKE PLACE IN SPACE.
MISERY NOMAKI WAS AN OBNOXIOUS PROTAGONIST. I CAN EXCUSE HER BEING A TERRIBLE PERSON, BECAUSE THAT CAN BE NARRATIVELY JUSTIFIED THROUGH A COMPLEX STORY (and when i say narratively justified i mean like, a character doesn't have to be a good person just because they are the protagonist. protagonist doesn't mean good just because there's a pro there, it just means the character we follow) BUT THE STORY IS NOWHERE NEAR COMPLEX ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY THE WAY IT TREATS BASICALLY EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN IT.
almost every single not-five star review of this book that i have seen discusses how this book treats the supporting cast. i will extend the argument of how it treats the supporting cast to how it treats misery as well.
characters are introduced in order to provide some sort of scratching post for miesry. nobody gets any development, and characters change not because things happen to them but because the story decides something needs to change to make sense. this would be fine if there was not a massive supporting cast introduced, one that was narratively implied to be a very interesting and important group of people. hey, im no writer, but i think if you introduce a whole team of characters for the protagonist to fight with, you have to actually make them into interesting people! but they just served as a group for misery to be better than! or to have one conversation with explaining their tragic backstory in order to justify the protagonist's hatred of the heretics! (SERIOUSLY WHAT WAS UP WITH THE SPIDER (SPYDER?? I LISTENED TO THIS BOOK DIDNT READ IT) THING. SHE HAS A THREESOME WITH HIM JUST SO WE CAN LEARN HIS TRAGIC BACKSTORY AND THEN WE NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN???? AND TO JUSTIFY MISERY LATER TORTURING A CHARACTER ???????? WTF.)
another thing is how much i disliked the evolution of lightning and misery's relationship. it feels like because they were supposed to be together they got together, not that there was an actual reason for the development.
misery herself has the most nonsensical character development too!! she goes from sewer rat to messiah (she seems convinced shes lying about that the whole time??? even though why would she be lying when she can do all of these messiah type things??) and then when her savior-ship is justified, the protolyzing (because, of course, she protolyzed and preached even before she knew whatever was going on with her was legit. and then it got worse).... even though this just like. doesnt make sense for her development. it's awkward as hell.
now i may just be someone who hates "the chosen one" trope -- except, if it is done well, i can appreciate it. luke skywalker! duck newton (a deep cut i know)! the avatar! she-ra! im going to stop scrolling through the tv tropes page of chosen ones now! but misery nomaki is a nonsensical chosen one. i dont understand why she is doing it at all. like we're told shes chosen by the spooky purple prose third person nonsense, and everyone seems to go with it, but like....?? did i just miss something?? she seems like shes chosen literally just because she has her mothers amulet. whatever. it was really annoying. favorite part of the whole chosen one thing is, when she was convinced she was still lying and voidmad, she decided that yelling at people for being heretics and then killing thousands of people was the move.... and it worked!!! she had zero lasting consequences for mass murder!!!!!!!
oh my god re: misery being a terrible person. can we talk about the jericho thing.
so misery has dreams about a figure she's convinced is a delusion. she proceeds to have a LOT of sex with this man in her dreams. i interpreted this sex as quite frankly being strongly coerced on her side - she just demands this man have sex with her and keeps doing it!! what!!
AND. when she learns this man is a real person, a POW from the enemy encampment... her reaction is.... TO GET SO MAD AT THIS MAN FOR "MANIPULATING HER" THAT SHE TAKES CHARGE IN HIS TORTURE, FORCING HIM TO REVEAL EXACTLY HOW TO SLAUGHTER THOUSANDS OF HIS PEOPLE. now maybe i just watched jacob gellers cod torture video and the blase treatment of torture in the public eye is on my mind, but EVERYONE IS WAY TOO CHILL ABOUT THIS. can you imagine how this would be treated if the situation was flipped and the protagonist was a white dudeman and not a nonbinary girlboss, and the white dudeman coerecd a woman into having repeated sex with him, and then proceeded to torture her after learning that she was a real person????? AND THAT THE NARRATIVE WOULD PROCEED TO TREAT THIS MAN AS THE MORAL HIGH GROUND?????????
the narrative is structured in a way that implies that misery is right in everything she does. as the savior, she is justified in every choice she makes, and the flowery purple prose discussing how wonderful they are and how fantastic this savior's origin story is further justifies it.
hey, you can just make your protagonist the villain. no one is stopping you from doing that. this would be slightly better if she was just the villain, and not the chosen one savior of the whatever the hell the side we're supposed to be on was.
ok i feel like there was something else i was mad about. uhhh
YES.
OK THIS IS A NITPICK BUT ITS NOT PACIFIC RIM, ITS JUST MECHA. PACIFIC RIM == TWO PEOPLE PILOTING A MECH TOGETHER THROUGH THE POWER OF LOVE AND MENTAL COMPATIBILITY.
MECHA = SOMEONE PILOTING A GIANT MECH. THIS IS BARELY MECHA AT THAT.
this book was not bad because it was written poorly. it was bad because it treats the plot and characters nonsensically, while the audience is supposed to treat the objectively terrible things that are happening as good because the chosen one was doing them. it is bad because the chosen one protagonists' position as the chosen one was never truly justified. if misery was actually genuinely insane, this would have been incredibly interesting. i would have enjoyed that a lot! but turns out that everything she experiences is because she is special and can do no wrong. this book ends on a cliffhanger, but i will admit that the cliffhanger of misery being put in prison while the royal family orchestrates a truce with the heretics is actually the perfect ending of this book. i will almost certainly not finish reading this series, even if just to figure out if misery's true position as the series villain is ever revealed. but that seems like a twist too obvious yet complicated to be truly ever realized.
(i am going to, at the end, acknowledge that i have a pretty severe anti-religious bias. i don't like blind faith. it is a thing that irks me on a personal and logical level. i think the moment i truly gave up on ever liking this book was the second the heretics were described as terrible because their faction split off because of a desire to understand the scientific underpinnings of the angels and whatever. like thats what i LIKE. AND YOURE MAKING THEM OUT AS THE VILLAINS. ugh. w/e.)
The story didn't pick up enough for me.