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A review by goosemixtapes
Now I Rise by Kiersten White
4.0
imo the first, like, 350 pages of this were 3-star level, and then the last hundred were 5-star worthy. so. i'm averaging. some thoughts:
>my biggest problem with the first book was that the writing was about as subtle as a hammer. for some reason white saw the need to spell EVERYTHING out for the reader (i get that it's YA, but it's a book that deals with dark enough topics that i wouldn't place it on the younger side of YA) and it was incredibly frustrating. this book had a few moments like that, but on the whole it was much better in that regard.
>it was also far less choppy! honestly, the first half of the first book felt like filler, exposition about the dracul siblings' childhood to flesh out their characters before any plot actually happened. this book had a plot from page one! wahoo. (i love character-driven stories as much as the next guy, but and i darken was, again, mostly just really choppy.)
>i hold to my opinion that lada's edginess wearies me sometimes, but i appreciated how much this book fleshed out her character--especially in terms of WHY she wants to rule wallachia so badly. in book one it was all "because it's my homeland and my birthright and it belongs to me and i'm a dragon who kills people rrrrrr" and sure okay girlboss but i think monarchy is inherently bad and birthrights are a bullshit concept, so i want some substance. in this book, we see her actually working for change in a country that has been brutalized by the rich. also, she/her princes are soooooo fucking sexy. also also, her last chapter was a fucking banger.
>radu my best friend. radu my best friend in the entire world. i liked him in book one and i liked him for the first ~350 pages here and then the climax hit and now he's my best friend in the entire world i care him so much. even if i did want to shake him sometimes and tell him is CLEARLY hitting on him. hey man i get it it's the 1400s and internalized homophobia is a bitch
>i'm a sucker for siblings. i am. every time one of them thought "god i wish the other one were here; they would know what to do" it got me
>once again, it would have been SO easy to make this series a not-like-other-girls screed, but though lada is a masculine woman who often scorns feminine things, the narrative does not agree with her! it is made very clear that radu's more feminine style of achieving things through manipulation & navigation of social situations is equally effective if not sometimes more so! and lada's scenes are full of women with all kinds of strengths (conventionally feminine or not), and the whole narrative balances “lada has to fight twice as hard by virtue of being a woman” with “lada being a woman helps her in many ways (understanding the power of mobilizing other women, the scene where her period puts her in a position to see an ambush coming, etc)”
>i like how pacifist this book was. maybe even, dare i say it, a little anti-colonialist. i want it to be. i want book 3 to be even more anti-colonialist. man fuck mehmed why do both of them like him so much
>i will admit. that the first 350 pages. were. fine. they were just fine. all the reviews that said "the first book is fine but the second book is better" were right, but at the same time, i wasn't necessarily excited to pick the book up until the climax (although then i couldn't put it down). that said. i am going to read. the third one. because now i am invested. in these siblings. and anyway i'm already 2/3s of the way there so i might as well
>my biggest problem with the first book was that the writing was about as subtle as a hammer. for some reason white saw the need to spell EVERYTHING out for the reader (i get that it's YA, but it's a book that deals with dark enough topics that i wouldn't place it on the younger side of YA) and it was incredibly frustrating. this book had a few moments like that, but on the whole it was much better in that regard.
>it was also far less choppy! honestly, the first half of the first book felt like filler, exposition about the dracul siblings' childhood to flesh out their characters before any plot actually happened. this book had a plot from page one! wahoo. (i love character-driven stories as much as the next guy, but and i darken was, again, mostly just really choppy.)
>i hold to my opinion that lada's edginess wearies me sometimes, but i appreciated how much this book fleshed out her character--especially in terms of WHY she wants to rule wallachia so badly. in book one it was all "because it's my homeland and my birthright and it belongs to me and i'm a dragon who kills people rrrrrr" and sure okay girlboss but i think monarchy is inherently bad and birthrights are a bullshit concept, so i want some substance. in this book, we see her actually working for change in a country that has been brutalized by the rich. also, she/her princes are soooooo fucking sexy. also also, her last chapter was a fucking banger.
Spoiler
YESSSSSS PRINCE LADA BURN IT ALL THE FUCK DOWN. SCORCH THE METAPHORICAL EARTH AND START OVER!>radu my best friend. radu my best friend in the entire world. i liked him in book one and i liked him for the first ~350 pages here and then the climax hit and now he's my best friend in the entire world i care him so much. even if i did want to shake him sometimes and tell him
Spoiler
cyprian>i'm a sucker for siblings. i am. every time one of them thought "god i wish the other one were here; they would know what to do" it got me
>once again, it would have been SO easy to make this series a not-like-other-girls screed, but though lada is a masculine woman who often scorns feminine things, the narrative does not agree with her! it is made very clear that radu's more feminine style of achieving things through manipulation & navigation of social situations is equally effective if not sometimes more so! and lada's scenes are full of women with all kinds of strengths (conventionally feminine or not), and the whole narrative balances “lada has to fight twice as hard by virtue of being a woman” with “lada being a woman helps her in many ways (understanding the power of mobilizing other women, the scene where her period puts her in a position to see an ambush coming, etc)”
>i like how pacifist this book was. maybe even, dare i say it, a little anti-colonialist. i want it to be. i want book 3 to be even more anti-colonialist. man fuck mehmed why do both of them like him so much
>i will admit. that the first 350 pages. were. fine. they were just fine. all the reviews that said "the first book is fine but the second book is better" were right, but at the same time, i wasn't necessarily excited to pick the book up until the climax (although then i couldn't put it down). that said. i am going to read. the third one. because now i am invested. in these siblings. and anyway i'm already 2/3s of the way there so i might as well