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A review by pinxsol
The Bitter Twins by Jen Williams
4.0
First of all, books named after weapons are badass, not gonna lie.
But the fact that this whole book spans only about two weeks is preposterous. That's 600 pages. And it still somehow felt rushed at times. I think that fact alone makes it obvious that sometimes, there are simply too many POVs to go through if you want to do all of your characters justice. There are some chapters that feel redundant, and don't further the plot at all. I think Hestillion's POV could've been largely cut, to be honest. An element of surprise with her development would've been nice, but besides that, the sheer amount of rage I felt reading her POV was slowly turning me into the Joker. She's such a selfish character that she's ready to physically and mentally torture everyone she loves because, well, her feelings were offended by a non-sentient tree. And her huge amount of plot armor has kept people from killing her on at least 3 separate occasions in this book alone. Infuriating.
Furthermore, I expected something else (perhaps something more) from the Finneral plotline. That's the part that felt the most rushed to me - the fact that there were just snatches of scenes before the big thing happened. And I think it's because of that that the scenes between Bern and Aldasair ended up not feeling entirely organic to me. I really wanted the calm before the storm moment in Finneral to happen, but it just didn't.
That said, I really enjoyed the expedition part. It was given perhaps even a bit too much time imo, with some chapters that felt meandering. I really loved how brutal it was, though.
Overall, I think my feelings on this one are: holy shit, this was stressful to read. I had to stop several times to distract myself because at one point around 300 pages in I was constantly worried about every character I was rooting for. They were just all in some danger or another. The final battle felt a bit boring to me, but the resolution was SO funny (gay power!!) that it didn't matter.
But the fact that this whole book spans only about two weeks is preposterous. That's 600 pages. And it still somehow felt rushed at times. I think that fact alone makes it obvious that sometimes, there are simply too many POVs to go through if you want to do all of your characters justice. There are some chapters that feel redundant, and don't further the plot at all. I think Hestillion's POV could've been largely cut, to be honest. An element of surprise with her development would've been nice, but besides that, the sheer amount of rage I felt reading her POV was slowly turning me into the Joker. She's such a selfish character that she's ready to physically and mentally torture everyone she loves because, well, her feelings were offended by a non-sentient tree. And her huge amount of plot armor has kept people from killing her on at least 3 separate occasions in this book alone. Infuriating.
Furthermore, I expected something else (perhaps something more) from the Finneral plotline. That's the part that felt the most rushed to me - the fact that there were just snatches of scenes before the big thing happened. And I think it's because of that that the scenes between Bern and Aldasair ended up not feeling entirely organic to me. I really wanted the calm before the storm moment in Finneral to happen, but it just didn't.
That said, I really enjoyed the expedition part. It was given perhaps even a bit too much time imo, with some chapters that felt meandering. I really loved how brutal it was, though.
Overall, I think my feelings on this one are: holy shit, this was stressful to read. I had to stop several times to distract myself because at one point around 300 pages in I was constantly worried about every character I was rooting for. They were just all in some danger or another. The final battle felt a bit boring to me, but the resolution was SO funny (gay power!!) that it didn't matter.