#I shall clear any questions in my inbox later gotta run back to work!!

[monkie-man]

Running around a lot today but I squeezed in some sketching 😮‍💨 Drew my favorite old yaoi couple :)

[cupcakemolotov]

6/? Wow the Sagredos have successfully married into money for like three centuries and not one eep of them being broke has leaked. Truly impressive. Man, I just want like an outside POV, an Herald forum, something about House Baylor. Because how does this look from the outside? One sister married into House Rogan, House Baylor looks like a vassal House but isn't officially. And the new Head of House Baylor got Alessandro Sagredo to leave his blue blood family.

I mean, the Sagredos are fairly scary.

But yes, I find this bit of information to be interesting. You gotta wonder what blackmail is going on behind the scenes. Alessandro obviousy scared the pants off the women he was previously engaged to because he shut the one down hard at the opera. very hard. and she shut up.

7/? Lol tumblr has decided I’ve spammed your inbox with too many asks so I’ll have to continue later. Hopefully you’re received them all. I haven’t even started waxing lyrical about how much I love Catalina. Catalina and Elara are def my fav IA heroines. (I’m so sad that iron covenant #2 is probably years away, although I completely understand why no one would want to write a dark book in 2020).

Catalina and Elara are a great deal of fun. Though I absolute adore the Nevada books. This family is insane, and I hope we keep getting books! (And god, give me Hugh. But yeah. Illona an Gordon have had a particularly rough few years personally, and Hugh is just not an easy book. I can wait.)

8/? i think that's what number I'm up to. I just love Catalina so much. It's just so refreshing to have an Urban Fantasy lead who isn't a gut-reactionary archetype (which don't get me wrong, I also enjoy). I enjoy her methodical planning. I really like her and Nevada's chat. I agree with your comment to the other anon, I think it answered some of the things that fell flat in SF, enough so that it felt planned and plotted.

I honestly think Sapphire Flames is a much better book now that I have Emerald Blaze. I went back and re-read it and it bothered me way less now that I have more information to work with. Which. Is always a good sign about a book in general and how a series is going I think. Its baby-catalina and baby-alessandro and then not!

9/9 Now that I've completely vomited all my EB initial feelings at you... in a hopefully somewhat coherent manner... how did you find EB? What did you love/hate? What do you want to see in Book 6? What gem do you think will be used for Book 6's title? It looks like popular opinion is Ruby in the IA FB group but I kinda want to see them stick to blue/greens/purples) coloured gems. Did you manage to catch any of the Zoom panels with IA? Have a wonderful day! And thank you so much for listening!!!

Over all, I really enjoyed Catalina and Alessandro in his book. I thought they did a good job of working in a bunch of big plot points and smoothing out threads from the previous one that bothered me. As I have said, they clearly went into this book with an understanding of what fell a little flat and made a point to fix it. I so greatly appreciate that about them.

I think in general though, Alessandro was good in this book but also a little off for me. I liked that he answered here questions, I like that he threatened Victoria, I liked that he backed Catalina up. But I felt we could have gotten a little more from in places that would have made things just a little more seamless. They didn’t do a bad job with him, but there was a lot of reflection that happened elsewhere that we got told about. I can’t even tell you where it could have been worked it, it just felt a tiny bit off point. Not a lot, just a little. My favorite scene for them in the book was in the van when he was patching her up! That was a delight. And the scene on the balcony cleared up a lot of things, but I feel like Alessandro in the third will need to grow a bit more. Or to show us the ways he has grown. He needs something to make him just a little more of a real character, though right now I am still struggling to find the words to explain what I even mean with that.

I really do enjoy Catalina. I like how they have done a good job of showing the similarities between the sisters and all their differences. Shes a lot of run while not being Nevada, and I appreciate that. Being the middle child and suddenly the boss I think is a difficult thing for someone and the family dynamics are spot on. I am really looking forward to seeing how she chooses to deal with her problems in the future.

I fucking love Leon. Give me his book. Please.

Also. WHERE IS MY MOMMA BAYLOR AND HEART ROMANCE? WHERE? *GRABBY  HANDS* GIVE IT TO ME.

Grandmother Tremaine is my favorite not-bad guy in this series. And I maintain my suspicions about Linus, and who he is but they haven’t really give us many bread crumbs about who Ceaser is either. And I want to punch Xavier in the face and cannot wait until Catalina takes his smug ass down. The dick.

I dunno, there has been a lot of thought about this and we shall see what happens! I probably would have to read it again to give you more thoughts (which I will be doing probably shortly!) But Illona and Gordon always manages to surprise me with their plot twists, and I do so enjoy that about them.

10/10. Oh wait- I completely forgot to mention- can't wait to see what powers Catalina's dark wings develop. Also super interesting that both Catalina and Alessandro have speedy healing talents (not connected, but attributable to both their respective powers). I wonder if Catalina's green/gold wings have been her passive field this whole time. The making people love her part. Using her wings/song to control/guide people's memories is probably active field?

I think Catalina’s power are going to be very interesting because she is not in a magical  bubble. She also has her other family magic and there is no telling what she got from Tremaine. I think your guess is very solid, but I don’t think her love me bits are entirely passive. But I do think the black wings are potentially a House Secret and something that is going to be very unexpected. But the opposite side of love is fear, right? So yeah. its going to be So Interesting.