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A review by elee2013
Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai
3.0
3 ⭐️
A little torn on how to rate this. I really enjoyed what MT was trying to do, just the execution did not go through. The pacing was terrible, and the plot was out of order in a way. It felt like it should have been 80 pages shorter — the climax of the story was far too early, and then we have what is supposedly the finish of Luc’s arc as the final act but it was not nearly as hard hitting as the end of act 3.
As well, I struggled with the world building. I basically had to kind of interpret things as though they worked for the Ministry of Magic, but it was definitely a rather nebulous thing with no exposition. At the end it felt like Oberon’s gang of henchmen, rather than a governing/policing body.
However, I really enjoyed Elle. Her relationship with her family felt true to culture. I loved what MT did with language in this as well, it was definitely a little bit of a pushback against English speaking culture, and it meant the character’s backgrounds rang true. As well, I identified with Elle as both an overachiever and an underachiever. There was a lot to like in her as a character, and her grit and joy were positively contagious. Luc was a cinnamon roll mother hen and he did a great job of being both high achieving and burnt out.
This does have some spice in it and the scenes (multiple) were pageS long but not with crude language.
A little torn on how to rate this. I really enjoyed what MT was trying to do, just the execution did not go through. The pacing was terrible, and the plot was out of order in a way. It felt like it should have been 80 pages shorter — the climax of the story was far too early, and then we have what is supposedly the finish of Luc’s arc as the final act but it was not nearly as hard hitting as the end of act 3.
As well, I struggled with the world building. I basically had to kind of interpret things as though they worked for the Ministry of Magic, but it was definitely a rather nebulous thing with no exposition. At the end it felt like Oberon’s gang of henchmen, rather than a governing/policing body.
However, I really enjoyed Elle. Her relationship with her family felt true to culture. I loved what MT did with language in this as well, it was definitely a little bit of a pushback against English speaking culture, and it meant the character’s backgrounds rang true. As well, I identified with Elle as both an overachiever and an underachiever. There was a lot to like in her as a character, and her grit and joy were positively contagious. Luc was a cinnamon roll mother hen and he did a great job of being both high achieving and burnt out.
This does have some spice in it and the scenes (multiple) were pageS long but not with crude language.