A review by wardenred
Lor by Lily Mayne

emotional hopeful slow-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? It's complicated

4.25

I can’t believe I just made out with a king.

I love how different this book is from the rest of the series. It’s proper dual POV! It takes place in the monster world! It is, in big part, a prequel! Such a breath of fresh air, and yet still without a doubt part of the big overarching story. I really enjoyed looking at the whole “portals opening, worlds colliding“ situation from the other side, as well as generally getting a better sense of what’s life like among the monsters. It was fun to have it sort of tied to the events from that one novella earlier in the series , in a way that completely recontextualizes some of the things stated there. It often makes fictional worlds feel more real to me when the same events/situations/objects get interpreted differently by different characters.

The romance here isn’t perhaps my favorite in the series, but I’ve definitely enjoyed it. I loved how the language barrier between Lor and Jugs was handled, this was my favorite part. Lily Mayne has a real knack, I feel, for putting her characters in situations where they literally can’t communicate and then having them get through it and start talking anyway. The note exchanges between Gloam and Rig, the whole deal with Seraph and Lilac, now this—and because the situations and the solutions are so varied, it never feels repetitive. I also really liked how, in a book written in English, the author made English sound foreign in certain scenes. My other favorite parts include Jug's’s scenes in the human world with all the 1980s vibes and family troubles and some pretty awesome people he found there—I hope they made it through the apocalypse. And also, that semi-subtle retelling element in the second half? Loved it and how it broke my heart.

The plotting could be a bit tighter—this is a big story, but 600+ pages seem excessive. There were entire plot threads that showed up and disappeared for ages only to spring up again seemingly out of the blue. I do think most of them came together neatly enough by the end. At least the ones that focused on Lor. With the ones that focused on Jugs, I have questions. I also have hope that maybe, just maybe the answers lay in the next book, and I think I’ll be stalking the author’s website obsessively waiting for news about it. I loved Lyri so much here, I want to know his story! And I want to get to know Cat at last! Between this book and Moth, there’s so much teasing about the two of them and how that overarching plot resolves, I just can’t handle it.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings