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A review by taliadevereaux
The Sun and Its Shade by Piper C.J.
1.0
Edit 3/6/2023: That’s right, folks. I returned and forced myself to finish this stupid book because I have no self-control. If you were wondering if it gets any better after the 40% mark, it doesn’t. Strap in because the kid gloves are coming off.
thank you to NetGalley for the ARC copy
THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE END OF THIS BOOK IN THIS REVIEW
the writing
I know this is an ARC, so hopefully, these errors will be fixed by the time it's published. Still, there were a lot of punctuation marks and typos that needed to be corrected—multiple instances of missing quotation marks when the chapter started with dialogue. The prose is just as overwritten as usual. Piper uses 97 words when she could use 5. It comes off just as pretentious and melodramatic as in the last book. Everything is so over the top that I constantly roll my eyes. She misuses words and has ridiculous metaphors that you must reread 2 or 3 times to make sense of. Everything is as convoluted as it possibly could be. Maybe some of ya’ll like this, but objectively this is not good writing. Sorry, not sorry.
plot/characters
So at the end of book one, Amaris and Gadriel escape from a battle arena on the back of a dragon, HP style and then jump off its back and conveniently land next to this magic academy. The book ends, and one would assume that the sequel will lead to Amaris going to the academy and learning to hone her magic. If you thought that, then you would be WRONG.
So we start exactly where we left off with little to no recapping of what happened in the last book. You're expected to remember, but it's hard considering how many unnecessary words are jammed between what little plot is actually in these books. They get taken to the magic school, and everyone thinks Gadriel is a demon, and they want to cage and study him. In some supremely dramatic and ridiculous monologuing, Amaris convinces the masters of the school that he's harmless. Amaris convinces herself Gadriel(now Gad) is her new best friend, but when Gadriel says, 'we fought together in Aubade' in response to being asked ', what does this woman mean to you?' she loses her MIND. She gets so assblasted mad because she thought they were friends, but APPARENTLY NOT. It's pathetic and ridiculous, and Amaris is so naive and has no idea how the real world works at all. She cannot conceive why Gadriel won't share secrets he was sworn to keep with her even after he explains it could mean his life. Like how is Amaris supposed to be likeable lol?? Because Gadriel said they weren’t friends, and Amaris took that shit personally. Then he blames her for his shredded wings, and as usual, Amaris can’t take responsibility, much like her author counterpart. And this becomes a recurring thing in the book. Amaris stays butthurt for nearly 500 pages because Gadriel said she was ‘someone he fought with’. The entire book is them hot and cold with one another, and it's exhausting. Neither of them is likeable at all.
They look at some books at the academy for two seconds, find zero answers and guess that this tower of magic has everything they need. And conveniently, it does. They climb 10,000 steps and find the hall of prophecies from the order of the phoenix (you know, the room full of shelves with glowing blue orbs? Well, this room also has shelves with glowing blue orbs, but the shelves are spiral-shaped, so it’s not plagiarism, guys.) otherwise known as the hall of orbs. Amaris realizes the floor is invisible, and there's an illusion cast over it. Gadriel goes to step over it, and instead of warning him like a normal person, Amaris screams wordlessly. That's it. Then she starts criticizing him for not paying attention to his surroundings, even though she should know by now that she can see illusions, but Amaris is too stupid to figure this out. After all, she's been aware of her powers for three years and only just started questioning their limitations and capabilities. She is an idiot. Gadriel asks Amaris if he can make the jump. She reads WAY too much into this question and thinks, "oh my god, Gadriel is putting his LIFE in my HANDS. He TRUSTS me." And I'm like...bitch; you're the only one who can see the distance. Are you for real rn? Anyway, he makes the jump, and Amaris cries in relief. Literally cries. Imagine if Indiana Jones cried in relief every time he solved a booby trap puzzle while searching tombs. He would look like an idiot. Amaris has a full-blown panic attack, considers leaving and becoming a seamstress, jumps, doesn't make it, and almost dies, and then Gadriel saves her. They touch some magical glowing blue balls, get sucked into a pensieve(I mean orb), and see some curses/blessings where faeries explode into golden dust. They meet the oldest man ever, who happens to show them the exact thing they need to see, then get tossed from the Tardis Tower. (it’s bigger on the inside)
Gadriel gets some conveniently 'manufactured' wings and can now fly again(literally has no lasting ill effects of having his wings literally shredded). Then they realize they've learned everything they needed to know and leave. (WHAT? YOU HAVE LEARNED NOTHING) They try to convince Amaris to stay, and she pretends she's going to but then leaves at night, but it's the most dramatic thing ever. She tries to write it like it's something worthy of ballads, but there is no good reason why it would be. They didn't even do anything there. And that's it. That's all that happens with Amaris' magical boarding school plot, and that's when I realized how much of a waste of time this bullshit book is. You had a whole ass magical boarding school, and you didn't use it at all?? You could've had Amaris attend school, actually learn some things since she is the biggest idiot ever and then solve a whole mystery of how the school is corrupt and experimenting on people with unique magic while also searching for the answers to the curse. But no, Amaris learns about her powers differently, and WE WILL TALK ABOUT THAT IN A MOMENT.
There’s a line I want to point out that I found hilariously ironic, and Piper(and Amaris) should take her fucking advice. "Ignorance is no one’s fault, but once you’re made aware of your lack, the choice to remain oblivious is when you become culpable.” So, if this is true, why didn’t Amaris take advantage of the magic school so that she could not be ignorant about her abilities? Why does she continue to be careless of how she speaks with Gadriel by calling him terms she knows are offensive and racist? (like how Piper(a white woman) continuously puts racist shit in her books and argues that it's not racist even though actual people of color are telling her that it's racist.) If this is true, why wouldn’t Piper fix what people have pointed out in her book as racist, ableist and plagiarized? Why wouldn’t she do the work so she can not be an ignoramus? Hmmm...
Now, Amaris chooses to learn to wield her power by ‘verbally consenting’ to allow Gadriel to help train her to figure out what exactly her magic is. This book warns about consensual breathplay, but once again, Piper is full of shit and a liar. Saying, “yes, I would like you to train me to use my magic”, does not equate to “I consent to you strangling me in my sleep.” Yep, you read that right. Gadriel waits until Amaris is asleep, stands over her in a position that will ensure she can’t fight him off and strangles her until she explodes with sonic power(much like Ciri's power from The Witcher show....god, the plagiarism just will not stop.) And when she gets upset, he scolds her for not using their safe word (snowbird). Tell me, how the fuck was she going to use a safe bird when you are cutting off her airway? How will she speak, let alone breathe, when panicking and being strangled? He says that he’s doing what any general would do for his troops, but in what fucking universe does a general strangle their soldiers in their sleep? This is not consensual breathplay, Piper, and if you think it is, then you need to reevaluate yourself and look up the definition of the word consent.
Now on to Nox. Nox has been just as irrelevant in this book as in the last book. She’s hanging out with Malik and Ash and has become a sudden Yes Man, and after literally a week hanging out with them, she decides she loves Malik. Are you fucking kidding me? This honestly makes me mad because Nox was coded as a lesbian. I don’t give a fuck if Piper says she’s bisexual. She wrote about her being repulsed by men, preferring women’s company, but because Piper wanted to write some hetero smut, she forced her to be bisexual. Stupid af. Not to mention her obsession with Amaris. Has she suddenly forgotten that because one guy was nice to her? That’s pathetic. Stand your fuckin ground, Nox. Having her fall for Malik in this is a bad call because it nullifies the fact that she fought her way free from having to fuck men against her will just to get to the woman she loves, only to immediately fall for a guy for literally no reason. Malik doesn’t do anything to deserve to be called ‘pure’ because he is no better than a sexy lamp. If she had taken the time to cultivate a relationship here where Nox slowly learns to trust Malik, that would be a completely different story. But Piper was too eager to jump in and write smut. I also find it funny that Gadriel and Amaris get the most drawn-out, uncomfortable ~spicy~ scene ever, but we get an amalgamation of metaphors for Nox and Amaris' time together.
I also think it’s a strange and pretty racist choice to make your ‘dark fae’(which, according to Gadriel, is a racist term that has been used very freely throughout the entire book) have their powers associated with ‘nightlife’ and then make them all dubious POC. She even made their country's flag ‘bronze for the skin of its people’. That is a supremely weird thing to do. Nox literally says she is good at being sneaky because of her dark fae blood, which is also what makes her ‘bronze’. Gadriel, who is also dubiously brown, is good at picking locks. Like…Piper….what the fuck are you doing???? Stop being RACIST!!!???
Everything that happens in this book is pure convenience. Nox and Amaris constantly stumble upon the answers. There is no motivation; there is no urgency. Nox dallies most of the time at the Duke of Henares' house, eating a malum malus she got from the tree of life(which is called Yggdrasil because Piper can't make up original concepts, apparently, and has to steal from everything else). She sees the tree’s memories and watches this princess pray to the All-Mother(like the All-Father who actually watches over Yggdrasil) to protect her child. Then we find out that the priestess, who is only ever referred to as the Tarkhany woman with ‘onyx skin’, was blessed by the All-Mother with immaculate conception and guess who the baby was? You guessed it. Amaris. The super white snowflake was immaculately conceived by a woman with very dark skin(because Piper has a really weird obsession with the contrast of dark and light skin, I guess). This is what they say to the nameless priestess(who actually dies earlier in this book in a very throwaway scene) when she asks if she gets to raise the child she just birthed. "The child belongs to everyone and no one, beloved….This babe is the manifestation of the prayers of the faithful.” So not only is Amaris literally the purest PERFECT SNOWFLAKE ON EARTH BECAUSE SHE IS A MANIFESTATION OF A PRAYER(in other words, Jesus), but a nameless black woman was used and killed off for no other purpose than to be her vessel.
We later discover that Nox's pen pal from the Chamber of Secrets, aka Tom Riddle, was actually the Gray Matron all along! She gets Nox to travel all the way back to the orphanage and tells her the truth(even though she had a literal magic quill she could've used to save everyone some time, but I guess she couldn't have Nox fall into the memories because that would just be too much plagiarism, even though she literally...already did that). Ya'll are gonna love this. Turns out that Princess Daphne, Queen Moirai's daughter, had a child with King Ceres from Raascot(the dark fae king dude). Daphne was apparently already married, and so to hide her child from this nameless husband, she goes to this CHILD MILL, leaves her daughter there and asks for a baby(specifically a boy) with similar coloring to her husband's. Then she leaves Nox there with the Grey Matron and brings the boy back with her, it doesn't work, and the boy immediately gets murdered because the nameless husband knows it's not his. This has left me with so many questions.
a) how did no one realize Daphne had a baby girl? were there no midwives when she gave birth? this is medieval times; I highly doubt she gave birth alone because there's a huge chance of her dying. So how is it not a single soul outside of the nameless priestess and Agnes knew that Daphne actually had a girl? Also, how did the nameless priestess know she had a daughter when she came in talking about her son and then immediately died after?
b)why, if Agnes never intended for Nox to be sold, did she allow Millicent to take her to the brothel? She says she didn't know how to deny her without spilling the beans, so she just....lets Nox be taken? In what world does that make sense? If she's supposed to protect Nox, why did she let Nox think Amaris needed to be protected? Why would she allow Nox to put herself in harm's way to protect Amaris? Why would she allow Nox to be whipped? Why would they constantly talk about Amaris being perfect and unmarred if it was truly Nox who was the important one, and they knew it all along? None of this makes sense.
c) Who is Daphne's husband that killed the son? Why has he never made an appearance? When did Daphne give birth to Nox? How long from when Moirai cursed Ceres, and the north fae did Daphne die? This whole part confuses the shit out of me. So, from my understanding. Moirai cursed Ceres after discovering he was Daphne's lover, and Ceres says that Daphne never saw him again after. So when exactly did this happen? Did Moirai tell Daphne's husband about the lover? When did she have the baby and when was the baby killed and where did the husband go, and when did she get pregnant? and...and...and... !?!?!?!??! If this was mentioned at all in this book, I don't remember it whatsoever. So if you know, please refresh my memory. Because Moirai has been making an illusion of a crown prince, so there never was any prince, so what happened to Daphne's husband?!??!?! Why, if she was the daughter of Moirai, was he able to literally murder Daphne and her "son" with zero repercussions?
Nox was named Nox, so she wouldn't forget the north. Fucking kill me. Well, she clearly knew nothing about it, so.
Amaris tells Gadriel that she got turned on when he choked her nonconsensually, so then he chokes her "consensually"(even though she freaked out when he choked her the first time, and this could easily trigger her into another panic attack, but okay.). She blows him, and he finger bangs her while choking her but won't take her virginity because it should be ~gentler~ the first time. First of all, you cannot tell me that Amaris still has her 'maidenhood' when she's been riding horses all this time. Piper doesn't know shit about horseback riding, though, and that's obvious. Second of all, I am convinced Piper has a secret incest kink. Why do you ask?
Well, Nox and Amaris were written as sisters, but now they're apparently star-crossed lovers? (yet they're boning random men along their journey to find one another. Makes sense.) Nox's literal father tells Amaris that she is basically his child. Because Daphne prayed for Amaris she is also considered Amaris' mother...so...they're literally siblings in love. Nox and Amaris are actually 100% based on Yennefer and Ciri from the Witcher, which is a mother/daughter relationship(Piper can say this book has nothing to do with the Witcher all she likes, she literally dedicated to this book to Henry Cavill as Geralt. We're not idiots.). Amaris calls her fellow reevers her 'brothers' and then tries to fuck one of them. And now she has a daddy kink with Gadriel(proven by the fact that Piper continuously calls him Dadriel.) This is only gonna get worse now that Amaris' actual father figure was murdered.
Also, killing off Odrin would've been a good move if Piper had bothered to establish an actual relationship with him and Amaris instead of just having him enter the plot for convenience's sake. The whole King Ceres/Yazlyn/Gadriel ending was the most exciting part of the book, honestly.
Still, don’t give your money to Piper CJ.
currently reading
This is what happens when you write a book in 9 days and don’t accept constructive criticism. You get sentences like this.
“She knew she was about to watch the head of a man as it was gnawed from where it connected to his shoulders.”
The whole book is like this. How did this pass the beta reading process?? This is not ready for publication.
pre-review
ya'll remember that time that Piper said that TNAIM wasn't even inspired by the witcher, and then she went ahead and dedicated this book to Henry Cavill as Geralt? Yeah, me too.
thank you to NetGalley for the ARC copy
THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE END OF THIS BOOK IN THIS REVIEW
the writing
I know this is an ARC, so hopefully, these errors will be fixed by the time it's published. Still, there were a lot of punctuation marks and typos that needed to be corrected—multiple instances of missing quotation marks when the chapter started with dialogue. The prose is just as overwritten as usual. Piper uses 97 words when she could use 5. It comes off just as pretentious and melodramatic as in the last book. Everything is so over the top that I constantly roll my eyes. She misuses words and has ridiculous metaphors that you must reread 2 or 3 times to make sense of. Everything is as convoluted as it possibly could be. Maybe some of ya’ll like this, but objectively this is not good writing. Sorry, not sorry.
plot/characters
So at the end of book one, Amaris and Gadriel escape from a battle arena on the back of a dragon, HP style and then jump off its back and conveniently land next to this magic academy. The book ends, and one would assume that the sequel will lead to Amaris going to the academy and learning to hone her magic. If you thought that, then you would be WRONG.
So we start exactly where we left off with little to no recapping of what happened in the last book. You're expected to remember, but it's hard considering how many unnecessary words are jammed between what little plot is actually in these books. They get taken to the magic school, and everyone thinks Gadriel is a demon, and they want to cage and study him. In some supremely dramatic and ridiculous monologuing, Amaris convinces the masters of the school that he's harmless. Amaris convinces herself Gadriel(now Gad) is her new best friend, but when Gadriel says, 'we fought together in Aubade' in response to being asked ', what does this woman mean to you?' she loses her MIND. She gets so assblasted mad because she thought they were friends, but APPARENTLY NOT. It's pathetic and ridiculous, and Amaris is so naive and has no idea how the real world works at all. She cannot conceive why Gadriel won't share secrets he was sworn to keep with her even after he explains it could mean his life. Like how is Amaris supposed to be likeable lol?? Because Gadriel said they weren’t friends, and Amaris took that shit personally. Then he blames her for his shredded wings, and as usual, Amaris can’t take responsibility, much like her author counterpart. And this becomes a recurring thing in the book. Amaris stays butthurt for nearly 500 pages because Gadriel said she was ‘someone he fought with’. The entire book is them hot and cold with one another, and it's exhausting. Neither of them is likeable at all.
They look at some books at the academy for two seconds, find zero answers and guess that this tower of magic has everything they need. And conveniently, it does. They climb 10,000 steps and find the hall of prophecies from the order of the phoenix (you know, the room full of shelves with glowing blue orbs? Well, this room also has shelves with glowing blue orbs, but the shelves are spiral-shaped, so it’s not plagiarism, guys.) otherwise known as the hall of orbs. Amaris realizes the floor is invisible, and there's an illusion cast over it. Gadriel goes to step over it, and instead of warning him like a normal person, Amaris screams wordlessly. That's it. Then she starts criticizing him for not paying attention to his surroundings, even though she should know by now that she can see illusions, but Amaris is too stupid to figure this out. After all, she's been aware of her powers for three years and only just started questioning their limitations and capabilities. She is an idiot. Gadriel asks Amaris if he can make the jump. She reads WAY too much into this question and thinks, "oh my god, Gadriel is putting his LIFE in my HANDS. He TRUSTS me." And I'm like...bitch; you're the only one who can see the distance. Are you for real rn? Anyway, he makes the jump, and Amaris cries in relief. Literally cries. Imagine if Indiana Jones cried in relief every time he solved a booby trap puzzle while searching tombs. He would look like an idiot. Amaris has a full-blown panic attack, considers leaving and becoming a seamstress, jumps, doesn't make it, and almost dies, and then Gadriel saves her. They touch some magical glowing blue balls, get sucked into a pensieve(I mean orb), and see some curses/blessings where faeries explode into golden dust. They meet the oldest man ever, who happens to show them the exact thing they need to see, then get tossed from the Tardis Tower. (it’s bigger on the inside)
Gadriel gets some conveniently 'manufactured' wings and can now fly again(literally has no lasting ill effects of having his wings literally shredded). Then they realize they've learned everything they needed to know and leave. (WHAT? YOU HAVE LEARNED NOTHING) They try to convince Amaris to stay, and she pretends she's going to but then leaves at night, but it's the most dramatic thing ever. She tries to write it like it's something worthy of ballads, but there is no good reason why it would be. They didn't even do anything there. And that's it. That's all that happens with Amaris' magical boarding school plot, and that's when I realized how much of a waste of time this bullshit book is. You had a whole ass magical boarding school, and you didn't use it at all?? You could've had Amaris attend school, actually learn some things since she is the biggest idiot ever and then solve a whole mystery of how the school is corrupt and experimenting on people with unique magic while also searching for the answers to the curse. But no, Amaris learns about her powers differently, and WE WILL TALK ABOUT THAT IN A MOMENT.
There’s a line I want to point out that I found hilariously ironic, and Piper(and Amaris) should take her fucking advice. "Ignorance is no one’s fault, but once you’re made aware of your lack, the choice to remain oblivious is when you become culpable.” So, if this is true, why didn’t Amaris take advantage of the magic school so that she could not be ignorant about her abilities? Why does she continue to be careless of how she speaks with Gadriel by calling him terms she knows are offensive and racist? (like how Piper(a white woman) continuously puts racist shit in her books and argues that it's not racist even though actual people of color are telling her that it's racist.) If this is true, why wouldn’t Piper fix what people have pointed out in her book as racist, ableist and plagiarized? Why wouldn’t she do the work so she can not be an ignoramus? Hmmm...
Now, Amaris chooses to learn to wield her power by ‘verbally consenting’ to allow Gadriel to help train her to figure out what exactly her magic is. This book warns about consensual breathplay, but once again, Piper is full of shit and a liar. Saying, “yes, I would like you to train me to use my magic”, does not equate to “I consent to you strangling me in my sleep.” Yep, you read that right. Gadriel waits until Amaris is asleep, stands over her in a position that will ensure she can’t fight him off and strangles her until she explodes with sonic power(much like Ciri's power from The Witcher show....god, the plagiarism just will not stop.) And when she gets upset, he scolds her for not using their safe word (snowbird). Tell me, how the fuck was she going to use a safe bird when you are cutting off her airway? How will she speak, let alone breathe, when panicking and being strangled? He says that he’s doing what any general would do for his troops, but in what fucking universe does a general strangle their soldiers in their sleep? This is not consensual breathplay, Piper, and if you think it is, then you need to reevaluate yourself and look up the definition of the word consent.
Now on to Nox. Nox has been just as irrelevant in this book as in the last book. She’s hanging out with Malik and Ash and has become a sudden Yes Man, and after literally a week hanging out with them, she decides she loves Malik. Are you fucking kidding me? This honestly makes me mad because Nox was coded as a lesbian. I don’t give a fuck if Piper says she’s bisexual. She wrote about her being repulsed by men, preferring women’s company, but because Piper wanted to write some hetero smut, she forced her to be bisexual. Stupid af. Not to mention her obsession with Amaris. Has she suddenly forgotten that because one guy was nice to her? That’s pathetic. Stand your fuckin ground, Nox. Having her fall for Malik in this is a bad call because it nullifies the fact that she fought her way free from having to fuck men against her will just to get to the woman she loves, only to immediately fall for a guy for literally no reason. Malik doesn’t do anything to deserve to be called ‘pure’ because he is no better than a sexy lamp. If she had taken the time to cultivate a relationship here where Nox slowly learns to trust Malik, that would be a completely different story. But Piper was too eager to jump in and write smut. I also find it funny that Gadriel and Amaris get the most drawn-out, uncomfortable ~spicy~ scene ever, but we get an amalgamation of metaphors for Nox and Amaris' time together.
I also think it’s a strange and pretty racist choice to make your ‘dark fae’(which, according to Gadriel, is a racist term that has been used very freely throughout the entire book) have their powers associated with ‘nightlife’ and then make them all dubious POC. She even made their country's flag ‘bronze for the skin of its people’. That is a supremely weird thing to do. Nox literally says she is good at being sneaky because of her dark fae blood, which is also what makes her ‘bronze’. Gadriel, who is also dubiously brown, is good at picking locks. Like…Piper….what the fuck are you doing???? Stop being RACIST!!!???
Everything that happens in this book is pure convenience. Nox and Amaris constantly stumble upon the answers. There is no motivation; there is no urgency. Nox dallies most of the time at the Duke of Henares' house, eating a malum malus she got from the tree of life(which is called Yggdrasil because Piper can't make up original concepts, apparently, and has to steal from everything else). She sees the tree’s memories and watches this princess pray to the All-Mother(like the All-Father who actually watches over Yggdrasil) to protect her child. Then we find out that the priestess, who is only ever referred to as the Tarkhany woman with ‘onyx skin’, was blessed by the All-Mother with immaculate conception and guess who the baby was? You guessed it. Amaris. The super white snowflake was immaculately conceived by a woman with very dark skin(because Piper has a really weird obsession with the contrast of dark and light skin, I guess). This is what they say to the nameless priestess(who actually dies earlier in this book in a very throwaway scene) when she asks if she gets to raise the child she just birthed. "The child belongs to everyone and no one, beloved….This babe is the manifestation of the prayers of the faithful.” So not only is Amaris literally the purest PERFECT SNOWFLAKE ON EARTH BECAUSE SHE IS A MANIFESTATION OF A PRAYER(in other words, Jesus), but a nameless black woman was used and killed off for no other purpose than to be her vessel.
We later discover that Nox's pen pal from the Chamber of Secrets, aka Tom Riddle, was actually the Gray Matron all along! She gets Nox to travel all the way back to the orphanage and tells her the truth(even though she had a literal magic quill she could've used to save everyone some time, but I guess she couldn't have Nox fall into the memories because that would just be too much plagiarism, even though she literally...already did that). Ya'll are gonna love this. Turns out that Princess Daphne, Queen Moirai's daughter, had a child with King Ceres from Raascot(the dark fae king dude). Daphne was apparently already married, and so to hide her child from this nameless husband, she goes to this CHILD MILL, leaves her daughter there and asks for a baby(specifically a boy) with similar coloring to her husband's. Then she leaves Nox there with the Grey Matron and brings the boy back with her, it doesn't work, and the boy immediately gets murdered because the nameless husband knows it's not his. This has left me with so many questions.
a) how did no one realize Daphne had a baby girl? were there no midwives when she gave birth? this is medieval times; I highly doubt she gave birth alone because there's a huge chance of her dying. So how is it not a single soul outside of the nameless priestess and Agnes knew that Daphne actually had a girl? Also, how did the nameless priestess know she had a daughter when she came in talking about her son and then immediately died after?
b)why, if Agnes never intended for Nox to be sold, did she allow Millicent to take her to the brothel? She says she didn't know how to deny her without spilling the beans, so she just....lets Nox be taken? In what world does that make sense? If she's supposed to protect Nox, why did she let Nox think Amaris needed to be protected? Why would she allow Nox to put herself in harm's way to protect Amaris? Why would she allow Nox to be whipped? Why would they constantly talk about Amaris being perfect and unmarred if it was truly Nox who was the important one, and they knew it all along? None of this makes sense.
c) Who is Daphne's husband that killed the son? Why has he never made an appearance? When did Daphne give birth to Nox? How long from when Moirai cursed Ceres, and the north fae did Daphne die? This whole part confuses the shit out of me. So, from my understanding. Moirai cursed Ceres after discovering he was Daphne's lover, and Ceres says that Daphne never saw him again after. So when exactly did this happen? Did Moirai tell Daphne's husband about the lover? When did she have the baby and when was the baby killed and where did the husband go, and when did she get pregnant? and...and...and... !?!?!?!??! If this was mentioned at all in this book, I don't remember it whatsoever. So if you know, please refresh my memory. Because Moirai has been making an illusion of a crown prince, so there never was any prince, so what happened to Daphne's husband?!??!?! Why, if she was the daughter of Moirai, was he able to literally murder Daphne and her "son" with zero repercussions?
Nox was named Nox, so she wouldn't forget the north. Fucking kill me. Well, she clearly knew nothing about it, so.
Amaris tells Gadriel that she got turned on when he choked her nonconsensually, so then he chokes her "consensually"(even though she freaked out when he choked her the first time, and this could easily trigger her into another panic attack, but okay.). She blows him, and he finger bangs her while choking her but won't take her virginity because it should be ~gentler~ the first time. First of all, you cannot tell me that Amaris still has her 'maidenhood' when she's been riding horses all this time. Piper doesn't know shit about horseback riding, though, and that's obvious. Second of all, I am convinced Piper has a secret incest kink. Why do you ask?
Well, Nox and Amaris were written as sisters, but now they're apparently star-crossed lovers? (yet they're boning random men along their journey to find one another. Makes sense.) Nox's literal father tells Amaris that she is basically his child. Because Daphne prayed for Amaris she is also considered Amaris' mother...so...they're literally siblings in love. Nox and Amaris are actually 100% based on Yennefer and Ciri from the Witcher, which is a mother/daughter relationship(Piper can say this book has nothing to do with the Witcher all she likes, she literally dedicated to this book to Henry Cavill as Geralt. We're not idiots.). Amaris calls her fellow reevers her 'brothers' and then tries to fuck one of them. And now she has a daddy kink with Gadriel(proven by the fact that Piper continuously calls him Dadriel.) This is only gonna get worse now that Amaris' actual father figure was murdered.
Also, killing off Odrin would've been a good move if Piper had bothered to establish an actual relationship with him and Amaris instead of just having him enter the plot for convenience's sake. The whole King Ceres/Yazlyn/Gadriel ending was the most exciting part of the book, honestly.
Still, don’t give your money to Piper CJ.
currently reading
This is what happens when you write a book in 9 days and don’t accept constructive criticism. You get sentences like this.
“She knew she was about to watch the head of a man as it was gnawed from where it connected to his shoulders.”
The whole book is like this. How did this pass the beta reading process?? This is not ready for publication.
pre-review
ya'll remember that time that Piper said that TNAIM wasn't even inspired by the witcher, and then she went ahead and dedicated this book to Henry Cavill as Geralt? Yeah, me too.