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After months of staying silent on literary discourse here on Tumblr, I finally have something to contribute.
Fanfiction is not the problem. Fanfic is a free, communal and valid form of writing which, although not always high quality, has yielded some genuinely great stories. The real problem, the reason for ‘booktok books’ and the flaws in modern literature, is fanfic being hijacked by corporations. The minute people try to make money off of it, the minute fanfic and fanfic-style stories lose their meaning. Fanfiction is written on the notes app at 3am for you and 5 friends who share your taste. It is self-indulgent, chaotic, often told through a queer and/or neurodivergent lens, and free from any pressure to be commercially palatable. The minute a few stereotypical fanfiction tropes and ideas are stolen by commercial publishers and twisted into patriarchal, heteronormative versions of themselves with no character depth beyond the romance (a problem that for obvious reasons doesn’t apply to fanfic), that is where the real problem begins.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
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therealamylee2 · 10 months
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i have a feeling elphaba already knew in her heart she was going to leave shiz and never come back, and that’s why she brought glinda along, because she wanted to at least properly say goodbye to her. 
even if everything went well with the wizard, she still would’ve left. she couldn’t deal with being under madame morrible’s thumb, couldn’t deal with the murder of dr. dillamond. she couldn’t deal with that school.
so she brought glinda along, for company, and maybe because she thought having a nice gillikinese girl along with her would help with her plea to the wizard. better presentation, a rhetoric sort of thing. but most importantly because she had a plan, a plan to say goodbye.
or, she didn’t know what she knew, she knew half of it, had half a plan. she at least knew she wasn’t ever going back to shiz. maybe a part of her hoped glinda would stay with her, would leave shiz too, if all went well with the wizard, if she didn’t have a reason to go “underground.” maybe she would’ve let glinda go underground with her, if things weren’t so dire. she'd stay up all night, nervous about their meeting with his ozness, but nervous about other things, too. how to tell her? how to tell her i’m leaving, and i want her to come with me? how to tell her i’m leaving, and i DON’T want her to come with me? not necessarily in a lovey, romantic way, but in an “acknowledging she (elphaba) can’t be alone” kind of way. she can’t be alone, not now, when she’s gotten so used to how the other half lives, but she also can’t bear to put glinda in danger. so she ponders, wondering what will happen, wondering if she’s made the right choice to have even asked glinda to come with her, if that was right of her, morally, and feeling the girl nuzzle in closer suddenly and deciding yes, she needs this.  
then it goes wrong. the wizard won’t listen. the wizard is toying with her. her plan changes and she knows glinda suddenly can’t come with her, it’d be too dangerous, she feels herself becoming too angry. it’d be asking too much, and she realizes almost with a laugh that she doesn’t know why she’d even ever thought that such a thing was possible. and it almost trips her up when glinda asks, rather frantically, where elphaba is going. she thinks for a split moment that maybe it can happen, maybe she can come, but squanders it. she kisses glinda when she leaves because it’s the best thing she can do. she kisses her twice because she needs it for herself. 
she’s been alone for so long, and being alone for longer will have to do. because it’s the right thing to do, and elphaba always tries to do the “right” thing.
and glinda’s crying, because she’s now lost two very important people in her life. because her elphie doesn’t care about her.
and elphaba isn’t crying. because if she did, she wouldn’t be able to stop.
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bookcub · 2 months
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i realize we are in February now but what were the best books you read in 2023? mine were the last tale of the flower bride by roshani chokshi, the magic fish by trung le nguyen, kindred by octavia butler, and little thieves by margaret owen
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explodingsilver · 7 months
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Ready Player One occupies a fascinating space in my brain. It's bad, but in a specific way that makes me suspect I have more in common with the author than I do with most of his critics.
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anwhitebooks · 2 months
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Fanfiction is in Jeopardy: Here’s how you can help
February 27, 2024 If you’re not plugged into bookish social media, you may not have seen the news: Onyx_and_Elm, the author of a popular Harry Potter fanfiction called Breath Mints and Battle Scars, has removed their works from AO3. This is due to the rampant (and illegal) issue of people selling bound copies of fanfiction online, often in storefronts like Etsy. This announcement from…
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anonwritersposts · 11 months
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“But worse than the violations themselves was the creeping understanding of what it meant to be female- that it’s not a matter of if something bad happens, but when and how bad.”
- Sex Object/ Jessica Valenti
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books-and-cookies · 2 years
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one of my bookish pet peeves this year has been this booktok/bookstagram trend of only recommending books if the have 🌶🌶🌶 spiiiiiice, or judging books based on their 🌶🌶🌶 spiiiiiice level
i like that people are more open about reading smut and liking books with smut, but i feel like this is *all* that gets recommended these days, and so many potentially amazing books are set aside because of this
not to mention the abundant subpar quality reads that get recommended because they have a big 🌶🌶🌶 spiiiiiice level
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nocasdatsgay · 2 months
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I was just reminded this on Reddit but what do you think of the Cassian-Nesta-Eris dynamic in chapter 62 of acosf? I find it so distasteful. But besides that, I don’t see any sort of relationship building between Nesta and Eris in the future. Nesta and Eris are parallels of one another and she (and cassian) played him too much in that chapter. I don’t know if you talked about it before, but what do you think of it?
So I had to go back and read that chapter cause I didn’t even remember what happened 😅 but I will discuss under the read more ❤️ note these are just my opinions.
First of all. The love angle that was supposed to be Cassian Nesta Eris was so underdeveloped. One of my complaints was we didn’t get a real love angle but more of a one sided weird situation. When I tried to go off canon and make an AU I couldn’t. After dancing with Eris in Hewn City she’s grinning and smiling with Cassian.
I have a lot of complaints about how I felt the book was pretty much like Sarah wrote scenes individually and then stuck them together. I say that because so much happened in Ch. 62 I got whiplash reading it.
Cassian was end game so I agree it wasn’t set up for anything else to be between her and Eris unless it gets reconned or situations happen that require putting them in the same room.
But I don’t think it was distasteful how they acted because there wasn’t substance for them (neris) to begin with. It was a throw away plot point that didn’t get fleshed out. Cassian cutting down Eris in that chapter wasn’t shocking to me. Mostly cause Eris constantly lets his prejudices show. Don’t dish it if you can’t take it.
As for the part about him asking if she considered his offer, this is where headcanon comes in and some canon mixed. Eris doesn’t come off as someone who plans to marry for love. He’s going to marry for his court and for power. Nesta has power. My headcanon was he seen that the night court was deliberately flaunting her so he played along. His role was to ask for her hand. He knew that. Maybe he did hope arrogantly that Rhys was dumb enough to let her go.
In that scene when he said his offer was genuine. He reads to me as envisioning Nesta being a power house and he (rightfully in terms of what he sees) thinks that the night court will not use her or worse will use her for their gain. It’s a “think of what we could do together with our power” situation. I also think he’s butt hurt she rejected him. He is vain.
Idk about him and Nesta being parallels. But I’m also tired (it’s night here rn and I had a long day)
So. To summarize I don’t think they played him too much but more it was Sarah making a point and she wasted everyone’s time.
Mildly related: do I ship them yes. Mostly cause I self insert as Nesta and I’m not a jock himbo girly 😂
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saranilssonbooks · 6 months
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The mystery which in all likelihood shall follow me to the grave: how the hell did Ahab get a new hat after his first one was snatched and destroyed??
Possible options:
-Kept a spare.
-Stole someone else's.
-Milliner on board!
-Melville fu*k up.
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the-forest-library · 10 months
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Mid-Year Book Freakout 2023
I was tagged by @logarithmicpanda and @theinquisitxor - thanks! This is a post I look forward to each year. 
1. Best book you’ve read so far this year
The Queen’s Thief series. I devoured these books. They are sublime. 
2. Best sequel you’ve read so far this year
See above. Also, Mysteries of Thorn Manor. I was delighted to have more adventures with Elisabeth, Nathaniel, and Silas. 
3. New release you haven’t read yet
I am still waiting on library holds for Going Bicoastal, Business or Pleasure, and Will They or Won’t They.
4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year
I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting, but nothing comes to mind. The books I was really looking forward to came out in the first half of the year.
5. Biggest disappointment
Live Wire by Kelly Ripa. I was looking for some tales of Dance Party USA, but they were sadly lacking. 
6. Biggest surprise
How many books I’d read about podcasts about missing girls, lol. That seemed to be a big publishing trend in the last six-eight months. 
7. Favorite new author (debut or new to you)
Well, Megan Whalen Turner. Also, Elissa Sussman and K.L. Walther.
8. Newest fictional crush/newest favorite character
I was going to say the main quartet from the Queen’s Thief, but my love extends to Costis, and Kamet, and Pheris, too. But really, Eugenides is at the top of the list.
9. Book that made you cry
Moira’s Pen - those last two stories killed me. Oh, and Happy Place. Absolutely destroyed me. 
10. Book that made you happy
America the Beautiful? by Blythe Roberson and Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus. I love a good road trip travelogue, but the addition of the national parks and food made me love these books even more. 
11. Favorite Adaptation
Bryony and Roses by T. Kingfisher is a lovely beauty and the beast retelling. 
12. Prettiest Cover
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries. The American and British versions are both pretty.
13. A book you need to read before the end of the year
I have a few books left of my 23 in 2023 list, including Persuasion and two TBD Discworld books. 
Tagging (no pressure, just fun!): @leer-reading-lire, @readingrobin, @godzilla-reads, @lizziethereader, @accidentalspaceexplorer, @aliteraryprincess, and anyone else that would like to do this!
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belespritbooks · 2 months
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My first read of 2024! (well the first book I’ve finished, anyway.)
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ + 1/2
Thoughts:
Mixed bag. Structure wise, this book was a very interesting read. I read this book for one of my classes, and we briefly touched upon how Faulkner's writing in this work seems to be much more geared towards showing off his literary skills. And in my opinion, I think this was the driving force of the novel rather than the message. To me, as a book worm, nerd, and student of literature, of course literary skill is impressive and important in great literary works, but I find that the most impactful books are ones that you put down and are truly moved by the story or the language. This book I was simply quite confused.
I'll explain why I feel this way for a few reasons: first the structure. The book being split into different parts with different narration (and different narrative styles) was, stylistically, very intriguing and impressive. Readers encountered Benjy's unique lens of the world, which didn't provide us much context or structure. This could either completely repel readers, or intrigue them further by the mystery Faulkner sets up. We are then introduced to Quentin's section, which I'll get into detail for in a second. The narration here is slightly less confusing, but because of his unique character, it is still quite broken and confusing. In Jason's section, the narration is much more clear and we're provided more context for the Compson's family relations, such as Caddy's daughter, Quentin, living with Jason and their mother. On pages 212 to 214, we're also given insight on the terrible way Jason treats his sister, as well as her crumbling life: begging for contact with her daughter, and begging for some money. Finally in the last section, readers are provided with a third-person omniscient narrator (and the writing in this section was GORGEOUS). Because there were four distinct types of narration, it seems to me Faulker was more focused on style than the message. Of course there was an important message, but because the style was so insanely confusing at times, I'm not sure how much of the message readers truly receive by the end of the book. Which is the beauty of literature: some books are so incredibly written it takes three or four reads to truly understand the point. But for me, since two sections of this book had incredibly difficult narrative styles, I'm not even sure how much I grasped of the plot or the family dynamic, never mind the meaning behind these relations. It was almost so stylistically impressive that it's just too frustrating to understand.
Though I would like to add: the different narration styles had a point: Faulkner was trying to express the same idea or feeling in each section, with four different methods of writing. In interviews, he shared that he saw this book as a failure; saying he was never truly able to get his message across, no matter which narrative style he chose. That is the beauty of this novel: Faulkner deliberately demonstrates the limits of language. My favorite example of this is the church sermon at the end of the novel, from pages 292-296. On page 292, Faulkner describes the church to look like a painting: “the whole scene was as flat and without perspective as a painted cardboard set upon the ultimate edge of the flat earth…” These descriptions of the scene as painted signify how Faulkner’s words on the page are flat and two dimensional. During the sermon, the preacher barely says anything, but the church goers have a transcendental experience just being in the room: experience allows one to transcend language itself. The only way to truly grasp human truths is to transcend language itself; it limits us, whereas experience frees us. The preacher seems to communicate to the crowd through empathy and emotion rather than words. It is the spaces in between the words where the emotion is felt, where the meaning is given to the crowd, just like in literature. The greatest authors know how to infuse meaning into a page, in between the words, not having to state it in their language.
To touch upon Faulkner's writing style: it is quite beautiful. I really loved Quentin's section now that I understand it better. His narration is confusing and patchy due to his deteriorating mental health and him grappling with past memories he cannot get out of his head. In class, I could not get away from pages 150 and 151, which is dialogue Quentin is remembering from the past before he left for Harvard. Here is just a snippet:
"hes crossed all the oceans all around the world...
do you love him
her hand came out I didnt move it fumbled down my arm and she held my hand flat against her chest her heart thudding
no no
did he make you then he made you do it"
The dialogue not having any quotations, punctuation, or pointing out who is speaking, represents Quentin's scrambled thoughts as this scene is from a long time ago: when remembering specific conversations years after, its almost impossible to remember exact words and phrases. That is why it feels so scrambled. Also significant is that this long period of dialogue pops up right in the middle of Quentin's present storyline, and when readers jump back to the present, we've missed Quentin being in a fight, because we were caught up in his past thoughts overtaking him.
Also, I chose this part of the dialogue to discuss how Quentin refused to believe Caddy had lost her virginity and instead made up a narrative in his head that she was raped. Quentin's feelings represent the values of the old South; he didn't want to believe Caddy had become impure before marriage or that a young woman was freely making sexual choices. Therefore, he wanted to believe he could protect her virginity by saying she was raped and "killing" her rapist. I could talk about Quentin's section forever: it was my favorite part.
However, it was still so confusing. I had actually thought Caddy was raped until we discussed it in class, because we are so trapped in his head in the book, and his narration is so broken with no explanation. Such as how he would frequently break his present narration (in the beginning of his section) and reflect on a memory in italics of him telling his father he had committed incest with Caddy. This was a made-up story to again excuse Caddy becoming impure in Quentin's eyes, but I wouldn't have put that together on my own, and likely not through a second time reading.
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therealamylee2 · 10 months
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i do think book elphaba is aroace though.
yes i’m 99% sure gregory maguire was going for the “she doesn’t think she’s pretty/she doesn’t value herself enough and that’s why she doesn’t allow herself romance/sex/etc.”
but i don’t know. i think her thing with fiyero was because she needed to be brought back up for air. she was so not herself but also SO herself, this new self, and it terrified her. she was lonely and being driven down a bad path and he was there to “save her” and she knew it. “yero my hero.” she enjoyed his company and the sex (because ace people can) but i don’t think she loved him romantically. i don’t think she’s romantically attracted to anyone at all, actually.
the difference is is with glinda she formed such a close bond with her that surprised them both. she doesn’t see glinda as a soulmate but rather as a SOULMATE, if you get what i mean. it goes beyond holding hands, cuddling, going on dates. glinda’s her person. she kisses her when she says goodbye not because of romance but because that’s her love, a different kind of love that’s unexplainable.
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bookcub · 1 year
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who wants to try a booklr game? it's an experiment.
since it's the end of the year, I will start my asking an end of the year book question and then when you reblog, answer the question and then add another book question for other rebloggers to answer.
those are the only rules, everything else is open to interpretation!!
my question: what was your favorite fictional romance you encountered in books you read in 2022?
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explodingsilver · 5 months
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Book review: Nightbane by Alex Aster
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Lightlark…2!
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I’ve already made my thoughts on the first book quite clear (read that review first if you haven’t already; I don’t feel like rehashing all the context), and were I a bit more sensible, I would have stayed away from its sequel. I am, however, somewhat of a literary masochist, so of course I borrowed this from Hoopla the day it was released (November 7th, not too long ago). Very pleased that I was able to write this review much faster than the first one, though this review is shorter, at only 2,100 words long. Was the experience worth it? I don’t know, you tell me.
(There are spoilers ahead, on the off chance that you care)
The plot and style
After the events of the first book, Isla is trying to learn her several powers as well as get a hold of this “leading two different realms” thing while trying to move on from getting betrayed by four different people she used to love. At a celebration for a Wildling holiday (in which no Wildlings other than herself are in attendance), Grim magically crashes the party from afar and announces that the Nightshade army will destroy Lightlark in thirty days. The other realms start preparing for the invasion, and Isla tries to recover all her lost memories of being with Grim in hope that they will reveal what his goal is and how to stop him, especially after receiving a prophetic vision of him standing in the ruins of a village he destroyed with his powers.
Put simply, if the plot of the first book is split between “Isla and Celeste search for a MacGuffin” and “Isla and Oro search for a different MacGuffin”, this book is split between “Isla and Oro do basic defense building stuff” and “Isla remembers the time she and Grim searched for a third MacGuffin”. There’s also a subplot about a rebel group trying to capture Isla, but this is inconsequential and could’ve been dropped entirely.
It feels like there was an attempt to address some of the criticism of the first book, but not nearly enough of an attempt. On the one hand, metaphor usage has improved to the point where it actually feels like it was written by a human being and not a neural network (no throbbing and raw glaciers this time around), the book acknowledges that no longer having a power no one else had in the first place is less bad than having a maximum lifespan of 25, and Isla realizes that Grim let her win the duel in the first book and that she did not win against a 500+ year old army general on the strength of her own skill. On the other hand, it does not address questions like “how does Starling society even function if none of them ever live to 26?” or “if Oro always knows when someone is lying, why didn’t he call bullshit the moment Celeste said ‘Hi, my name is Celeste’?”
Speaking of that last thing: I didn’t mention it in my review of the first book because it didn’t really feel relevant to anything, but each ruler has a ‘flair’, a special power that is unique to them. Oro’s is that he can always tell when someone is lying. Grim’s is that he can teleport. This book reveals that Isla’s is that she is immune to curses. Glad to finally have an answer to one of my biggest questions of the first book (checks notes) 75% of the way through the second one, when this explanation should’ve been given the moment we learned the original stated reason does not apply.
Wildling elixir and its (lack of) consequences
Much of this book centers around the presence of the Wildling elixir from the first book, a potion that is super effective at healing wounds. As you might imagine, this kills a lot of the tension. Used in conjunction with Isla’s magical teleportation device, “teleport away, use Wildling elixir, teleport back” becomes an easy way to recover when the characters get their flesh ripped apart. And indeed, they do this all the time! The book tries to nerf this strategy by stating that the elixir is rare due to the flower used to make it being rare, but 1) this is at odds with Isla’s very liberal use of it, and 2) aren’t the Wildlings the “make flowers grow instantly” people? Why can’t they just use those powers on it like they do for every other plant?
There was a bit of potential for an interesting theme with these flowers: Isla eventually learns that while the Wildlings use them to make the healing elixir, the Nightshades use those exact same flowers to make the titular nightbane, which is basically fantasy heroin. I was intrigued by this motif (I like it when things have a dual nature like that), but unfortunately this doesn’t really go anywhere, other than some vague gesturing at “wow, just like Isla”. Speaking of Isla…
Isla
This time around, Isla is clearly traumatized by the events of the last book, trusts very few people, and is aware that she is in over her head with leading two realms full of subjects she barely knows while also being the king’s unofficial consort. Not a bad start for a character arc, but in effect, she has gone from naive and impulsive to naive, impulsive, and guilty about those things while making little effort to amend them. It feels like her attitude towards leadership is basically “I’m allowed to call myself a bad leader but nobody is allowed to agree with me on that.”
Much of Isla’s internal conflict in this book is based around her Nightshade heritage on her father's side. She is convinced that there is an inherently evil part of her because her father was from the Inherently Evil Realm. This may not come as a surprise, but I do not like when stories have such a thing as an Inherently Evil Realm. Not only does Nightshade fill this role, but the book never even gestures at pushing back against Isla’s conviction that her heritage taints her, and in fact ends up affirming it.
This book really told me to my face that Isla is the first person in millennia to have both Wildling and Nightshade powers. I do not buy that even for a moment. Maybe my disbelief is because the series discarded the “only one realm’s power set per person, even if their parents are from different realms” thing in the same book it was introduced, and I would expect there to be Wildling/Nightshade couples way more often than once per few millennia. But no, that highly plausible thing can’t happen because then Isla won’t be the most special person currently alive!
The other characters
Sadly, the rest of the cast did not improve, and in some instances, got worse.
Oro going from "world weary, distant king" to "official love interest" has unfortunately sanded down all his interesting aspects, and everything I liked about his character in the first book now takes a backseat to being overly protective of Isla and making stock Love Interests threats to kill anyone who hurts her. I swear, he turned so generic that some of his lines were indistinguishable from something Grim would say. But hey, if nothing else, he at least didn’t get character assassinated like I was sure he would!
While Grim actually does stuff in this book, he still has no personality traits other than what's included in the Sexy Villain Starter Pack. Like, it actually upsets me that he's such an absolute nothing of a character. Everything about him begins and ends with “what if the villain…was sexy?”, and there are about a morbillion stories out there that provide more interesting answers to this question. You’d think focusing on him this much would be the perfect opportunity to give him any unique traits at all, but Aster certainly did not take that opportunity, nor did she ever answer the question of why he likes Isla, despite the sheer number of pages dedicated to their relationship.
As for everyone else? Azul, our beloved token gay black man who runs his realm like a democracy, still receives woefully little page time. Cleo, the bitchy ruler who hates Isla for no reason, receives even less, but at least we get to hear about her dead son, I guess. Ella, Isla's Starling assistant, is mentioned so rarely I wonder if Aster forgot she exists. There are also several new average citizen characters introduced, but none of them are remotely interesting. They're all defined solely by whether or not they're on Isla's side. It says something when the best new character is Isla's new animal companion (a panther named Lynx, who rules because he does not give a shit about Isla).
The chili pepper emoji, as the TikTokers call it
Because I must do as the book did and address the topic of sex before I get to the final important bits.
This book is much hornier than the first one, but in a way that makes large parts of it feel like one of those dreams where you're trying to have sex with someone but your attempts keep getting interrupted. I regret that I did not count the number of times Isla was about to fuck someone and then got denied for some reason or another.
There are three times she actually succeeds, and luckily these scenes do not read like they were written by Sarah J. Maas, despite her obvious influence on everything else. This doesn't seem like much of a compliment, but this series needs all the W’s it can get. That's not to say everything is fine, though. There's one scene that's obviously using all the "first time" stuff for characterization, and I can't help but feel this would be more effective had they not already slept together a few short chapters beforehand? Like c’mon, all you had to do was switch the order of those two scenes.
The ending
Shortly before the Nightshade army is set to storm the island and destroy it, Isla learns Grim’s (and Cleo’s) real motivation for doing so: there’s a portal on the island leading to another world, one in which the original founders of Lightlark came from before making Lightlark in the image of the world they left. Grim and Cleo want to open that portal and reach the other world, which will just so happen to destroy the island. They’re not actually trying to kill everyone for the evulz. Isla, in her naivety, accidentally opens it for them before they even arrive.
During the final battle, while trying to steal Grim's powers so she can kill him and save Lightlark, Isla finally remembers the last two important memories: 1) she and Grim actually got married right before he memory-wiped her, and 2) what she thought was a prophetic vision of him killing an entire village was actually a memory of her doing so. Convinced that she'll accidentally kill Oro if she stays with him, she agrees to go with Grim, whom she just realized she is still in love with, in exchange for a promise that he'll withdraw the attack.
I cannot remember the last time I had this strong of an "are you fucking kidding me" reaction to the end of a book. But after some thinking, I decided that it actually makes for some great tragedy material. “Traumatized woman with a supportive partner becomes convinced that she’s too horrible to be with him and goes back to her terrible husband” would make for a good story if this was a more grounded book written by anyone else. Alas, this concept just had to be tackled here.
I also naively thought that because the deal was for two books, that means this would be a duology. But it feels like there will be a third book, and I'm hoping there is, not out of any desire for more (unsure how much more I can take), but because it would be straight-up authorial malpractice to end the series on that note.
Conclusion
This honestly wasn’t quite as bad as the first book, but the problems that persisted outweighed the ones that got fixed, and the severe case of Middle Book Syndrome certainly did not help its case. It’s a very small improvement stylistically, but when the nicest things I can say about it are “there were some concepts that could’ve made for an interesting story in the hands of a better author” and “the sex scenes aren’t atrocious” and “the cat is kinda cool”, then I feel justified in calling it terrible overall. It’s a good thing that Lightlark…3! is presumably a long ways away, because I will need all that time to recover from having read this.
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desertdollranch · 5 months
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While I very much love my three Magic Attic Club dolls......
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I do have to say that the Magic Attic Club book series are not even close to being as good quality as the dolls, and I think that was a huge contributing factor to the eventual failure of Magic Attic Club as a company.
I'm an adult and I know I'm not the target audience for the books. But this is something I discovered back when I actually was the age that they're written for. I got a few at my school's book fair and did not like them, so I never kept the books the way I did with my entire American Girl books (which again I am not the target audience for AG books either, but I still like them as an adult because they really are that good and well-written.)
What I always disliked was that the books all follow the same basic boring plot thread: one or all the girls have a conflict with their friends, they go into the magical attic, and travel through the magic mirror to another location or time. They have a very low-stakes adventure for a couple of hours, spending the entire time being confused and unsure, since they're pretending to be someone else. They stay in the adventure just long enough to learn an important lesson about friendship, and then they go back to their normal lives with the skill they needed to solve the conflict with the friend(s). And that's it, the story is over. Nothing drastic had changed. It ends happily ever after.
The dolls, though, are top tier. They're cute and well made, as are their clothes and accessories, so I'm glad I have the ones I do own, and I'll be keeping them around for that reason. But without memorable or deeply emotional stories to connect to them, then I wonder if maybe that made the dolls themselves harder to connect to, and so the Magic Attic Club never really became so widely loved the way the American Girls Collection did.
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anonwritersposts · 1 year
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“What are you meant for, if not to rule?”
Evangeline was born to serve the kingdom as a future queen against her own hearts desire. Her parents were invested in designing the perfect “servant” than allowing any chance of creating her own path. Evangeline fell in love with Elane, creates a new plan so they’d never be apart, but it all backfired when Mare is chosen in the Queenstrial.
I really understand now her feelings towards Mare. Towards Maven. Cal. I fucking LOVE HER
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