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aclockworkreader's Reviews (226)
“for at times such misery comes over me, such misery.... Because it begins to seem to me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life, because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct for the actual, the real; because at last I have cursed myself; because after my fantastic nights I have moments of returning sobriety, which are awful!”
beautiful prose and so many quotes that were either thought provoking or deeply relatable. i think i expected this to be more of a classic love story, but it’s really about the loneliness of being a dreamer and a romantic.
i feel like this is a story i’ll revisit in the future and something that may have different meanings at different points in my life. but it does make me excited to read more from Dostoyevsky!
beautiful prose and so many quotes that were either thought provoking or deeply relatable. i think i expected this to be more of a classic love story, but it’s really about the loneliness of being a dreamer and a romantic.
i feel like this is a story i’ll revisit in the future and something that may have different meanings at different points in my life. but it does make me excited to read more from Dostoyevsky!
so much to say here because there were some elements i really loved and others i didn’t like at all.
the world building and the prose are absolutely beautiful! i loved the slow build and how the story makes you feel like you’ve fallen into this world along with the characters. it felt so vivid and so much like a dream.
i think the biggest surprise for me was how much of the book focused on the romance. i didn’t expect romance to be the central point of the story, so that caught me a bit off guard. and because i didn’t like the romance, it was difficult to enjoy most of the book.
hana and keishin had no chemistry, the romance was pure insta love (they’ve literally known each other for 3 days and she’s willing to sacrifice her whole family for him???), and it was all so rushed. and their ultimate reason for being together, because they’re “from the same world” wasn’t compelling—it actually made the already uninteresting romance even less interesting. it was giving “fated mates” and that’s one of my most disliked tropes (but justice for haruto because he was the best character and i would read a whole book just about him!! he deserved better 😭).
the ending was also messy and rushed. and because the characters felt so one dimensional, there was very little emotional payoff in the end.
i don’t think this is a bad book by any means, i think it has a lot of really amazing qualities. and if you click with the romance, you’ll easily love it! but that unfortunately didn’t happen for me, so i’m left feeling a bit disappointed.
the world building and the prose are absolutely beautiful! i loved the slow build and how the story makes you feel like you’ve fallen into this world along with the characters. it felt so vivid and so much like a dream.
i think the biggest surprise for me was how much of the book focused on the romance. i didn’t expect romance to be the central point of the story, so that caught me a bit off guard. and because i didn’t like the romance, it was difficult to enjoy most of the book.
the ending was also messy and rushed. and because the characters felt so one dimensional, there was very little emotional payoff in the end.
i don’t think this is a bad book by any means, i think it has a lot of really amazing qualities. and if you click with the romance, you’ll easily love it! but that unfortunately didn’t happen for me, so i’m left feeling a bit disappointed.
while i really enjoyed being back in this world (because i’m such a huge fan of an ember in the ashes), i found this story to be a little flat overall. most of the characters felt one dimensional and i wasn’t a fan of the insta love romance, so i found myself mostly reading for the mystery of the plot—which if you’ve read the original series, was pretty predictable.
i wanted to enjoy this much more than i did. i don’t think it was bad by any means, just not as amazing as i was expecting. i’m still looking forward to the next book though and i hope that adds a lot more backstory and development for the characters, because a lot of this just felt like set up.
i wanted to enjoy this much more than i did. i don’t think it was bad by any means, just not as amazing as i was expecting. i’m still looking forward to the next book though and i hope that adds a lot more backstory and development for the characters, because a lot of this just felt like set up.