#and romantasy which has the emotion i want bUT GOES ABOUT IT IN A WAY I CANT RELATE

[writingmoth]

liking romantasy as an ace person who is more sex-indifferent than sex-favorable is so exhausting. there are all these books that look cool but the authors mostly market them based on spicy levels and spicy scenes and it does nothing for me so i just sit here like :| thats nice i guess haha

[thexgrayxlady]

What I Read in January 2024

The Mask of Mirrors by M. A. Carrick - 3.5/5.00

Holy Rooks Batman! All my cards on the table, Locke Lamora ruined fantasy heists/con artists for me forever, and this book is following up one of my favorite books of last year.

This book is too damn long. It does not need to be 630 pages long. I don't mind a slow paced book, but this one is unfocused with too many unnecessary tangents and POVs. If you cut down the number of POVs, the lush world building and intricate plot and storylines could be maintained, without the bloat. That being said, you can tell that this comes from a place of ambition and love. You can tell the authors have the biggest brainworms about this story and the world they've created and they want to share it with the reader so badly and I love that for them. There is a glossary and a dramatis personae , but most of the time I feel like things were introduced with enough context that I could figure it out. I did refer to the dramatis personae for some of the minor characters with very similar names though.

It has a glacial start, but that lets the reader luxuriate in the world. Some of the magic is introduced here, but it feels very mundane in a good way. Then the genre does a hard shift at the half way point from a heist to more of a fantasy, but it takes a lot of things from the heist plot and interweaves them with the fantasy in a way that I love. The magic that was once just another fact of life in this world feels fantastic and big in a way it didn't before, but it builds that upon the strong backbone of what was established earlier. Once that shift occurs, things move a lot faster, but it's still plagued with unnecessary POVs, which cost the book whatever inertia it's built up.

The characters are interesting and enjoyable. Vargo is such an asshole and I love him. I love reading Ren's POV and watching her switch between her different personas. When she's being Arenza, it feels very different from when she's Renata. I just wish that she had been a little more morally gray. She's a con artist. She's explicitly back in the city to swindle her way onto a family's social register and steal a fuckload of money. Let her do more bad things. That being said, Sedge does not add enough to justify his inclusion in the present day. We don't get to see his reunion with Tess or feel any emotional impact from his reunion with Ren. He should have stayed the dead brother in the sad backstory.

Unfortunately, the other half of the Rook and Rose duo also leaves a lot to be desired. The Rook's mystique is ruined too early on by the scene in Mettore's study. In one scene, he goes from a mysterious Batman or Zorro figure to a generic snarky brooding guy. If they had never spoken until he pulls her out of the dream, that scene would have been stronger. The reveal about his identity doesn't quite work either because you get that character's POV too often for it to feel like a cool reveal, it's just feels cheap. He's also one of the POVs that I would have removed anyway because he's kind of insufferable and annoying. You could excise the Rook from the story and not much would change. The next book in the series needs to do a lot of work to prove that one of the titular characters needs to be there.

Despite how much this book has working against it, I liked it. I want to read the next one. It has fantastic world building and respects the reader's intelligence. The characters are really enjoyable and well defined. It just has a lot of frustrating bits and needed a stronger editor to tell the authors no.

Dragonfall by L.R. Lam - 3.25/5.00

I didn't realize when I started this that it was as romance focused as it was. That being said, I enjoyed it a lot more than a lot of other romantasy I've read. This is in part due to the fact that the author actually understands what enemies to lovers means.

The characters are all interesting, but some POVs are not needed and I wish the author had stuck to 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person. I really enjoyed Arcady and Everen bickering. I think that more books relationships should start with holding a knife to someone's throat. I like that the book ends before the relationship can really get started. And the hair dye scene is so. Good.

The beginning is a little rough and I had to reread some sections a few times to really understand what was going on, but after that it was fast and easy to read. I may have appreciated a glossary or some appendices, but by the halfway point, I figured out the parts of the magic system and culture that weren't being explained in the text. I honestly liked this because it shows that the author respected their readers' intelligence enough to trust that they can figure it out. For example, there's something weird going on with capitalizing some, but not all, pronouns that isn't explained until ~1/3 of the way through. There is enough in context to figure out the rules, but I could see how it could annoy readers.

Feathered dragons are always cool.

The Defiant Heir by Melissa Caruso - 4.25/5.00

Swords and Fire is a very underrated series. I read the first book a few years ago and I'm surprised about how much of it remembered after the first few chapters refreshed me. It gets extra points because the author is a ZooMass graduate.

After several books in a row where I felt like there were far too many POVs, sticking to one POV was so refreshing. Amalia is interesting to follow and I enjoyed getting to see her growing into her own political prowess and the deepening bond between her and Zaira. By the end of the book, she's become someone who can make a difficult choice for the greater good. The ending leaves no easy way out. There's nobody she can convince and no opponent that Zaira can burn away. All she can do is direct the fallout from Ruvan's machinations to where it can do the least harm, even if it hurts people she loves.

The other characters are also fantastic. I loved reading Zaira's growing relationship with Terika. Marcello remains a steadfast and steady presence. Istrella's ingenuity and eccentricity shines on the page like the artifice devices she creates.

And then there's Kathe. He's an asshole and I love him so much. There's a scene at the end that I went feral over, even if in it he's displaying some top tier dickery. Actually, I liked it more because he was displaying some top tier dickery. I love when characters who are supposed to be morally gray tricksters actually do shitty things.

I was surprised by how much I didn't hate the love triangle and actually kind of liked it. You understand how much Amalia cares for Marcello, but you also understand and appreciate how much she would be giving up if she didn't pursue a political match. And Amalia knows this too and it hurts so good. And you understand why she's entertaining Kathe's courtship, initially in order to make an important ally in Vaskandar, then as she develops genuine feelings for him, even if he is a shady bastard. And part of this is just because how secondary the romance is to the plot. Like yes, this is going on in the background, but Amalia's got to stop the Witch Lords from going to war and pass her reform acts.

This series is such an underrated gem.

Catalyst Gate by Megan E. O'Keefe - 3.75/5.00

I was so excited to read this and I had such a blast with it. While there are some fumbles, the author mostly sticks the landing and The Protectorate might be one of my new favorite sci-fi series.

The pacing is more varied than in Chaos Vector. It still takes you by the hand and says, "Let's fucking go!" but now, it also takes the time to slow down and let some things really sink in and build tension. Some sections, like one of Ranier's bases, feel rushed and in some ways, it feels like it should have been split into two books in order to keep up the fast pace, but not hurry through set pieces.

I really liked going to Earth and finding out what actually happened to it. It was one of the strongest sections of the book and it's horrifying. We've known for the whole series that the Earth was destroyed, but it feels like standard sci-fi set dressing. Earth was destroyed in a natural disaster, humanity took to the stars. No. What happened is horrifying and well foreshadowed and I loved it. The last book had a reveal that made me go feral. This one was chilled me.

The characters are still strong and interesting, if not particularly complex. Biran really stole the show this time around. He grows into his role as Director of Ada and you see him come into his own politicking and deceiving and having to put on a good front the face of horrifying trauma. His relationship with Vladsen is really great. In the amount of time that we got with them, I enjoyed reading how his crew comes together and the tension that still exists between them. It took me three books to really get into Sanda and Tomas, but I came around. The new ship, Bel Marduk, is such a good girl, I wish we got more of her and her emerging personality, but it's a long book and she's ultimately a minor character. I also wish we got more of Echo and the person she's growing into outside of being an offshoot of Ranier and I feel like this really was a missed opportunity. Sometimes, what the characters know and how they know it, feels a little muddy and I wish you got to see them figure these things out.

While Ranier maybe doesn't deserve to be at the table with SHODAN, GLaDOS, and Durandal, she should at least be in the same room. At first, she almost doesn't feel threatening because she's a very distant antagonist, but once she moves against the protagonists, she's horrifyingly effective and efficient. Reading about the destruction of Ada is a gut punch, especially when you get to the gardens. The narrative takes the time to point out that there are cultivars that were saved from Earth and after learning about what really happened to Earth earlier in the book, it's actually really sad. The scene where Sanda's trying to negotiate with her and realizes that she can't be negotiated with because she can't want anything beyond her corrupted programming is really effective.

The ending is, unfortunately, really rushed. There's a big reveal about one of the main characters that doesn't have enough buildup for it to have the impact it should have. I wish that humanity had more of a role in defeating Ranier. That being said, I really like that when we get to the alien precursors, they might be worse than Ranier. While this series comes to a definite ending, there's enough left open that if the author wanted to come back to this universe, they could and there would be satisfying stories to come out of it.

Raiders of the Lost Heart by Jo Segura - 1.25/5.00

My disappointment is apparently measurable on a five point scale, and my day is ruined. The main character is too stupid to be likable, and the love interest is just incompetent. The author wants you to believe that these are two intelligent and hard-working archaeologists in their thirties, yet they are immature, impulsive, and unprofessional.

I really hoped I'd get two rival archaeologists falling in love over an adventure. Instead, I want to take rivals to lovers way from this author. The characters don't fight in a way that's fun. Corrie just throws tantrums and again, Ford is way too incompetent to be a believable love interest.

It is, however, very easy to read. I read most of it while too hungover to focus on the more complicated book I actually wanted to read. While it's bad, it isn't notable enough to even be mad at.