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rhodochrosite) wrote2023-07-25 10:00 am
rhodochrosite) wrote2023-07-25 10:00 am
no longer quarterly books i read may-aug 2023
another few months another books roundup drafted in outlook on company time, literacy win... this ended up quite long i think because i had so many opinions about things these books could have done better but honestly overall not a bad crop this time. spoilers for violet made of thorns, daughter of the moon goddess, fourth wing, and omniscient reader's viewpoint:
VIOLET MADE OF THORNS – GINA CHEN
Enemies to lovers trope rec from a cc anon (dear anon if you are reading this thank you I’m still grateful you took the time to share this rec with me!! I’m sorry my experience with this book wasn’t as positive as yours 😢) but unfortunately I think the execution just did not click for me personally because I couldn’t really grasp why they were having so much alleged haterism – I know the point is that cyrus has been in love with violet all this time and is saddened by how much she’s apparently changed over the years in her quest for his father’s approval, and violet is quite blind to the exact tenor of her own feelings towards cyrus, but how exactly did we get from there to the state of bitter enmity violet keeps emphasing that they have? I think there was just something off about the balance of deep ideological tension to petty rivalry, though there was some great potential there, and I love idealistic boy x cynical girl pairings in concept. And I always think in enemies ships generally that the 1 should always love the 0 even if the 0 doesn’t clock the 1s feelings about them or their own feelings about the 1 and is having sofuckingcomplicated hateristic ksdkkj about the 1.
Ultimately I didn’t think they had very good chemistry and I didn’t find the sexual tension compelling, and the point at which the enemies part boiled over into the lovers part felt too sudden to me – I think there was too much awareness and deliberateness re: what was happening, which made it feel like they weren’t that serious about the enemies thing, whereas I think op was trying to go for a drawn-out smirkemoji2smirkemoji Shut Up / Make Me type slow sexual tension (speaking of I cannot believe op straight up did use that dialogue exchange in the book lmfaooooo I wish it hadn’t felt so juvenile). Instead it would have been more effective if they were so caught up in fighting they actually didn’t process when they started making out, like just a high-octane jumble of feelings and instincts and actions the whole way through with no space to think about what they’re really doing – the wtf did we just do part can come afterwards. I do think it’s good that the negative tension didn’t fully dissipate after they started having a physical relationship though, I hate it when enemies to lovers is done as a total shift in emotional states rather than a confused circling around the ambiguous boundaries between both.
I might not have loved violet and cyrus, but dante and Camilla were by far the stars of the book and stole every scene they were in. as soon as dante was introduced as basically the centre of a tug of war between cyrus and violet I started having beautiful visions of a love triangle but with dante as the centre – I really truly believe that cyrus and violet triangulating their desire through dante would have elevated their relationship and chemistry into Absolute Slay tier AND grounded their rivalry more solidly… AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN REALLY FUNNY!! As for Camilla, being a vain ostentatious let them eat cake type lesbian princess with no interest in responsibility and every interest in material desires is enough TO ME though I did start feeling like we needed to guillotine the monarchy and redistribute some of that wasted wealth to the common people like let’s dial it back a bit ok… Sidenote extremely funny that Camilla and cyrus are like infamous for being sluts, between them they got every woman in the kingdom covered at least twice.
On a personal level the magic system requiring bloodletting was kinda hitting my landmines but that’s a me thing… My final and pettiest complaint is that I just don’t think cyrus is an attractive love interest name 😭 also unrelated to anything I clocked op as an ex fic writer in about 2 sentences. Sometimes you just know…
Anyway even though the dynamic fell flat for me there were nonetheless some banger lines sprinkled in there eg my fave line:
^ literally slayed the world even though on the established lore this is actually not true as violet explicitly says she’s able to see the past more clearly than the future since it’s already happened lmao. Still what am I gonna do, not appreciate an enjoyable turn of phrase?
DAUGHTER OF THE MOON GODDESS – SUE LYNN TAN
This redefined the meaning of mid for me. Like it’s just the blandest boringest fantasy romance story imaginable written with a very chuuni idea of purple prose (it was giving right click->synonyms->replace with the longest option that comes up), except it’s set in fantasy china instead of fantasy Europe so the window dressing has some pizzazz. Doesn’t make it a good book though!!! I’ve been trying to think of literally anything I enjoyed about this book and have come up empty handed. Every character was cartoonishly one-note and every relationship had the depth of a paper cut. Every second sentence had some kind of simile or metaphor to the point where even I, an avid lover of figurative language and known purple proser, was like ENOUGH. Just say what it is straight up!!! Mostly because they were really boring similes and metaphors so they might as well have not been there, and I truly believe that overuse of figurative language diminishes the meaning and impact of each individual instance.
Op’s idea of imagery is throwing a bunch of adjectives into the sentence which also got tedious to read, I know that describing things in detail is a fantasy convention but they should be good descriptions. Using more complicated words doesn’t automatically make your writing better or more sophisticated like sometimes it is OK to just say “red” and not “vermillion”. There was not a single line that impressed me or even made me laugh, I really spent the entire time reading like 😐. Also op is obsessed with starting sentences with “How” like can we get some uhhh sentence structure variation up in here. Screamed when op deployed “orbs” to describe a character’s eyes in what appeared to be total earnestness and at that point I gave up trying to assess the book generously.
Two story structure gripes: firstly – WAY too much expository montage recapping, not enough concrete real-time action happening. Absolutely egregious to OPEN the book with xingyin delivering a chapter long narrative monologue recounting her childhood and family backstory. That is all lore that should have been revealed in increments throughout the story at pivotal plot-relevant moments, not upended on the reader at the outset when I don’t have any reason to care about her yet. It was so bad I could barely tell when the real-time action actually did start happening and I just think it would have been much more engaging if the story had started with the empress visiting chang’e. Literally just cut everything that came before that!! Secondly – very odd pacing. Totally new plot points would crop up out of nowhere, cue lore dump, cue quest. Gave the book a rather disjointed feeling like we were lurching from Big Event to Big Event with little sense of buildup or denouement.
However! You guys know I can forgive basically any story-related problem so long as the dynamix are good though. but unfortunately none of the hets had any chemistry at all my goddddd I was rooting for nobody to win. I didn’t understand why Liwei was so intensely taken with Xingyin from first sight when their first meeting was the most nothing scene of all time, though I at least could see that Wenzhi’s initial regard came from his admiration of Xingyin’s archery prowess. The love triangle was so annoying (I LITERALLY ENJOY LOVE TRIANGLES USUALLY) especially the way that both the love interests kept getting SOOOOO insanely jealous anytime any other man so much as spoke to her. Can you guys get a fucking grip, that level of insecurity is not attractive or appealing especially when neither of them were actually officially together with Xingyin.
I guess liwei was less offensive overall because I don’t think I could tell you a single personality trait that he has other than being into xingyin for whatever inexplicable reason, and on principle I will always support first loves, except I extremely did not approve of liwei kissing xingyin when she came back from her military campaign as he was already engaged to fengmei at that point. Wenzhi’s personality (inasmuch as he had one) got pretty badly assassinated when his villain reveal happened and I don’t think I approve of that because it felt to me like a cheap and easy way to kill him off as a viable (“””viable””””) romantic prospect. lesser offence than the others but when wenzhi was holding xingyin captive she KEPT accusing him of stealing her stuff as one of the primary sins he had committed which made me cry like girl your priorities… what about all the people he’s killed and is planning to kill 😭 arson murder and jaywalking moment. And the honeypot scene was so stupid and predictable I can’t believe wenzhi fell for that.
As for Xingyin… she was not an effective protag and I did not find her charming or plucky or independent, which i think is what she was supposed to be giving. The more I think about it the more I think she’s nothing, she’s weirdly oblivious in an exasperating way like when she did magic and then was like Wow… was that magic? No it couldn’t possibly be… and then she spent the first quarter of the book being convinced she didn’t have any magic ability despite being the daughter of a goddess (if anything would the natural assumption not be the opposite??). and also her selectively not picking up on Liwei and Wenzhi’s respective gripless jealousy moments and being like omgggg guyssssss what’s wrong… I wonder why they’re acting so strange… Like I love dramatic irony but there’s a difference between implying things that we as the audience pick up on that the pov character doesn’t, and the pov character just coming off as stupid.
Her ideals and motives are incredibly weak – she barely spares a thought for the moon or for her family, which was set up as her primary driving motivation, through the majority of the book and it feels like an afterthought when towards the end she’s like Ohhhh yeah I gotta get my mum pardoned. This would have been so easy to achieve too if the exposition at the start of the book had simply been distributed more evenly or if she had done some mental comparison between her home on the moon and the various places she visited. It’s not even like she’s meant to be the type to be distracted by her romantic drama as she’s explicitly set up to NOT be that, and to largely not notice her love interests’ interest in her, and yet it seems that it’s really the main thing on her mind. Not necessarily unrealistic of her to be preoccupied by romance, just boring and inconsistent. I love characters with strong convictions, and I love characters with no convictions but who know this about themselves – I have no time or patience for characters who are supposed to have strong convictions but display no evidence of this.
I also found a lot of her actions personally unlikeable, particularly in the scene where Liwei tells her about his political engagement to Fengmei for the sake of upholding the alliance between their nations. He could not have made it any clearer that he was basically being forced into it and was only agreeing out of his sense of duty towards his people but she still was being like, I can’t believe you CHOSE to get engaged to another woman this is a BETRAYAL. Is it an understandable reaction? I guess. Doesn’t mean I like it though!! I just think it would have been wayyy more effective and angstily romantic if Xingyin had understood, even if anguished and unwilling to accept it, that Liwei was being held hostage by the circumstances of his birth JUST LIKE XINGYIN HERSELF. Especially as she is also supposed to be struggling with her self-imposed filial duty to rescue her mother vs her growing love for Liwei!!! Instead of lashing out at Liwei and making it seem like he’d done this because he wanted to marry a beautiful noble girl like Fengmei.
Something that annoyed me EXTREMELY MUCH was that Xingyin had a grand total of one (1) positive relationship with another girl who wasn’t already part of her household, and approximately 3 pages was spent on that so there was basically no onscreen development that would have let it earn the Girl BFFs status the book was trying to convince me it had. Like ohhhh you wish you were mu nihuang and xia dong sooooo bad. Almost felt like it was only there so that op could beat the Not Like Other Girls allegations by being like no see she does have a friend who is a girl!!! I guess xingyin was also nice to one of the servants but again they interacted literally twice. Every other woman was depicted as a raging bitch or a vapid nonentity… could not tell you how disappointed I was that she never developed a relationship with Fengmei (or that Fengmei never developed a personality) because they had a really sweet first meeting scene before Xingyin knew who she was, and I think the potential dynamix between them as Liwei’s forbidden true love and Liwei’s political fiancée (and ofc moving past that and returning to that little moment of shared conspiratorial laughter that they began with) could have been soooo juicy especially if they were able to reach some kind of understanding. Like yeah okay I guess Xingyin can resent Fengmei but that’s the boring and obvious route!! Which I think is the key problem with the storytelling overall – just very tired and tropey in an unappetising way, and determined to stay as far away as possible from putting fresh spins on any of the conventions it plays into. Just because everyone is Chinese doesn’t make your story new or interesting!! You’ve still got to pass step 1) write a good story!!!
I know I’ve written a lot in this review, most of it quite critical, but I really don’t think this book is bad, just mid – many of its problems could be easily fixed and it has the potential to be a much better story than it ended up being. I don’t think I care enough to read more from this author though. I will say that the cover art is beautiful. Anyway 1/10 because I didn’t find anything about it personally appealing even though objectively I think it’s not as bad as books I’ve rated higher. But I do think being bad but entertaining is better than being ok but boring. No fave lines, nothing was good enough.
FOURTH WING – REBECCA YARROS
Military academy for dragonriders is two of my favourite tropes in one so I had pretty high hopes going in and they were at least met on that front, I loved the power fantasy of violet growing into her identity as a member of war crimes institutionalised violence school and bonding two dragons and those dragons being super rare and powerful and enacting lethal retribution on the guys who tried to hurt or kill violet and clearly loving her very much. So satisfying!! I fucking love dragons so much it’s unreal. In fact I think there should have been a stronger focus on the dragons and they should have had a bigger presence in the story, especially Tairn and Sgaeyl – felt like I got a pretty good understanding of Andarna’s personality, but not so much the other dragons, which is a shame since they were by far the most compelling part of the novel.
Unfortunately the romance was EXTREMELY hit or miss – I don’t like it when the heroine is aware of her own feelings or attraction, especially in an enemies to lovers context (jez night world is still my gold standard for emotionally dense heroines who don’t realise they’re in love with their nemesis, and recently alice if you could see the sun). Like the lady doth protest too much methinks… I just think it weakens the enemies aspect and my ideal heroine is too preoccupied by some other intensely pursued motive to pay much attention to her feelings anyway. Violet and xaden’s dragons being mated was very funny though and I’m always a fan of forced reluctant proximity (it was more exciting when they were in their enemies stage) esp when their dragons were fucking and that was like sex pollening them. There were a couple of quieter moments between violet and xaden that worked for me but every time they were supposed to be having like supercharged sexual tension I was cringing and looking away and pretending I didn’t see it. But I really loved the scene where violet drops a pen in class and goes to pick it up and xaden’s shadow powers pick it up for her even though he’s on the other side of the room talking to someone else not paying attention to her… except he was paying attention to her after all, and carefully enough to go to the trouble of doing this tiny kind thing for her despite only being obliged to make sure she doesn’t die so that he doesn’t also die :’’’) heartflutteringly romantic.
The love triangle is a stupid fake one where the losing love interest gets character assassinated to make the endgame route more obvious, which pisses me off so much ya authors these days just don’t get how to write a good love triangle where both options are actually interesting characters. All love triangles that aren’t ot3 types should be like cheese in the trap, where the endgame is pretty unassailable but both rival love interests are highly compelling and well written. It is kind of amazing how little dain existed considering he’s supposed to be the rival love interest lmao it’s a shame since I love lawful types who struggle with by-the-books justice vs intuitive justice, and I think the ideological conflict coupled with the military rank hierarchy difference between dain (greater good > loved ones) and xaden (loved ones > greater good) could have been pretty interesting. But even though his single character trait is being obsessed with rules dain’s first action was literally attempting to make violet escape the riders to join the scribes? And the hypocrisy of this is never pointed out so I can only assume it wasn’t intentional… like why did he get mad over violet rules lawyering a technicality (which litr makes no sense if he’s a black letter kind of guy anyway – by his own logic, he should accept that a loophole in the text is a loophole) and also repeatedly prioritise The Rules over violet, but had no problem breaking rules or at the very least skirting around rules to try to protect violet at the beginning. Honestly quite funny of dain to just straight up say that he would pick following the rules over violet. Good writing is when characters directly tell us exactly what their ideals and motivations are. I do think it would have been better if dain’s blackletterism had been framed as prioritising ideals of justice/the world/the greater good which he believes is best achieved by a framework of law and order, instead of as 1800-i-love-the-concept-of-rules which just seems kind of stupid, but op would never have treated dain’s character with that much consideration lest he come off too sympathetic and romantically viable.
Generally I didn’t care for violet, I thought she was inconsistently written and got soooo boring as soon as the romance started happening in earnest because it was literally all she had going on internally, and the STUPID ASS third act conflict pissed me off like xaden literally did spend the entire preceding book warning her that she’d hate and distrust him as soon as she found out who he really was and what he’d done and she kept pressing him to let her in despite his reservations and then when he did she hated and distrusted him and this is never brought up so again I can only assume it wasn’t intentional as I don’t think the book is smart enough to be making some kind of point about it. I’ve already talked about my negative feelings about her lack of any real conflict about being attracted to xaden… like she’s just straight up ogling him in a scene where he’s sparring shirtless and she’s barely even mad about it. I don’t think I can name a driving motivation for her other than being very horny about xaden. Also real two nickels moment with protags of enemies to lovers fantasy books being named violet lol.
I was having trouble taking xaden seriously because of his name dkjfkdjffd like I love x names with a fervour matching any 5th gen boy group company but xaden is just soooo fucking funny… couldn’t stop reading it as *yugioh gx dub vc* Xaden Xmuki. He was also an extremely standard take on a bad boy with heart of gold ya love interest trope but at least his actions therefore had consistency and I was very heart touched at the backstory reveal that he took personal responsibility for the “sins” of every child of a traitor as a trade to save them from execution, I love self sacrifice so much it’s unreal… I wish I could say anything about any other character but they just did not exist. which is such a shame because I thought the fucked up family relationships that the book opened with would have a much stronger presence!! There was some really promising motherdaughter legacy expectation and replacement goldfish anguish but violet’s mum just flattened into such a one-note villain in all of her subsequent appearances. It would have been so much more compelling if she’d acted in a way that had understandable motivations (even if filtered through violet’s limited pov) despite hurting violet, especially since violet grew to love being a rider so her mother was ultimately “”””right””””, but she just seemed cruel and dismissive for no reason.
I really appreciated that violet actually interacted with other characters, unlike xingyin, but this did result in the opposite problem where absolutely nobody among the supporting characters stood out or was memorable except for Liam (my human onepick T______T), and I’m not convinced that wasn’t just my natural positive inclination towards henchmen and prodigies. But I think he had a very solid presence – hardworking ace, undyingly loyal to xaden because he wants to match the sacrifice xaden made for him, reluctant (on violet’s end) bodyguard to kind steadfast friend for violet, very charming hobby of wood carving :’) )’: I liked mira as well and at least her absence from most of the story was justified since she’s a busy working soldier adult. It is amazing how Rhiannon also barely existed as a character even though she was supposed to be violet’s girl best friend and I do think it’s funny that op invested the entire book’s worth of #representation points solely in Rhiannon 😭 like ticking off a checklist. All in all, definitely would have benefited from a smaller ensemble cast.
What else… I didn’t love the writing but there were a few jokes that were funny and I’m not bothered by an informal/modern narration style in a fantasy novel, I do prefer this kind of tone to daughter of the moon goddess’s “orbs”. It did get a bit grating when both the dialogue and narration kept. Writing. Sentences. Like. This. But whatever… I’ve accepted that ya nowadays is all kinda wattpad yume-y in tone, it’s the least of this book’s crimes. Also touched on this above and not to be doing representation discourse but it’s so annoying how ya authors who acknowledge that gay people exist only let their side characters be gay like would it kill you to let your protags experience a twinge of Not Straightness omfg it’s literally as easy as an offhand line about thinking a female instructor is hot or something, god knows violet spends enough time thirsting over various men. Personally I just think it’s unrealistic for characters to be straight so it ruins my immersion, you guys know I’m hetlover9000 but this is strictly premised on both halves of the ship being bisexual.
Overall if I wanted to read about a dark horse heroine going to a military academy and falling in love with her superior officer I would simply pick up the poppy war again. I still had fun though so 5/10, this is the bad but entertaining as opposed to ok but boring book in question.
Fave line:
Xaden’s been stalling to give Tairn and Sgaeyl time to arrive. My heart sinks like a rock, pinning my feet in place. “I will hate you for this.”
“Yeah.” He nods, a flash of pure regret crossing his face as he draws away. “I can live with that.”
OMNISCIENT READER’S VIEWPOINT – SING SHONG
(guy who just finished orv last night) I could not possibly hope to explain my feelings about all 551 chapters of this story in the space of this post but suffice it to say that I cried blew up smiled cried again cried again again. Wow guys. Writing is crazy… reading is crazy… storytelling as a conversation between writer and reader is crazy… And it was all LOVE it’s always been LOVE it will always be LOVE forever and ever. A story that loves you, you who loves a story, love that saves you, love that saves a story, love that saves the world. There’s too much to talk about idk. i know this is vague as hell but i really feel like all i can say atm is *face holding back tears emoji* i enjoyed orv and thought it was good. yoohankim literal narrativeshipping real in the literal text My God.
wait actually i want to say a few words about my ONEPICK OF THE WORLD jung heewon i love... girls who are swords forged from fire and justice and vengeance and loyalty... isn't it crazy how faithfully she endured even though fire is not meant to be something that lasts forever and the hardest blade breaks the easiest since it is wielded the most. because even when she resented kdj and even when she didn't know kdj she still loved him. just how much she fought and withstood more than any person should have to bear... how kdj saved her and how she saved kdj and how in saving each other they were also saved... and all things converged to SALVATION.
Fave lines:
"I can kill all of them if I want." Han Sooyoung saw killing intent for a moment on Yoo Sangah's face and shut her mouth. "Therefore, I can save all of them if I want."
"Do the ones that can't remember anything…" I stared straight at Yoo Joonghyuk and replied. "…also forget about their sorrow, too?"
JHW: "Since you started it, you need to see the end properly. Do you know?" // HSY: "It isn't about being forgiven for everything. No matter how the developments flow, we should end the story properly."
As if to say, don't forget this wound, please remember her just as he'd remember this wound. // Even if she knew this wouldn't heal her, even if she knew that holding that hand would only inflict her with a greater wound – courage to hold that hand in order to live for one more time.
Even if the world was destroyed, even if the scenario barrelled towards tragedy, she'd remain as a writer, always. And that was why it was so much more painful for her. All those different pains yet to be described must still be inside her head even now.
Lee Jihye wordlessly stared at the coin gripped in her hand. Then, slowly tossed it up in the air. It spun around and her palm grasped it again. However, she was unable to open her hand.
"Eonni?"
The sensation of the coin captured in her hand; she couldn't tell whether it was heads or tails, but without a doubt, the coin did exist.
"Are you alright?"
Lee Jihye felt the texture of the coin in her hand for the longest time.
She was not an 'author' like Han Sooyoung, nor was she the 'protagonist' like Yoo Joonghyuk. No, she was Yoo Sangah. Yoo Sangah, who was Kim Dokja's colleague and also his friend.
I wanted to let Han Sooyoung know of my emotions one more time. To tell her that I could only come this far because of the story you gave me, that I loved your story more than anyone in this world.
VIOLET MADE OF THORNS – GINA CHEN
Enemies to lovers trope rec from a cc anon (dear anon if you are reading this thank you I’m still grateful you took the time to share this rec with me!! I’m sorry my experience with this book wasn’t as positive as yours 😢) but unfortunately I think the execution just did not click for me personally because I couldn’t really grasp why they were having so much alleged haterism – I know the point is that cyrus has been in love with violet all this time and is saddened by how much she’s apparently changed over the years in her quest for his father’s approval, and violet is quite blind to the exact tenor of her own feelings towards cyrus, but how exactly did we get from there to the state of bitter enmity violet keeps emphasing that they have? I think there was just something off about the balance of deep ideological tension to petty rivalry, though there was some great potential there, and I love idealistic boy x cynical girl pairings in concept. And I always think in enemies ships generally that the 1 should always love the 0 even if the 0 doesn’t clock the 1s feelings about them or their own feelings about the 1 and is having sofuckingcomplicated hateristic ksdkkj about the 1.
Ultimately I didn’t think they had very good chemistry and I didn’t find the sexual tension compelling, and the point at which the enemies part boiled over into the lovers part felt too sudden to me – I think there was too much awareness and deliberateness re: what was happening, which made it feel like they weren’t that serious about the enemies thing, whereas I think op was trying to go for a drawn-out smirkemoji2smirkemoji Shut Up / Make Me type slow sexual tension (speaking of I cannot believe op straight up did use that dialogue exchange in the book lmfaooooo I wish it hadn’t felt so juvenile). Instead it would have been more effective if they were so caught up in fighting they actually didn’t process when they started making out, like just a high-octane jumble of feelings and instincts and actions the whole way through with no space to think about what they’re really doing – the wtf did we just do part can come afterwards. I do think it’s good that the negative tension didn’t fully dissipate after they started having a physical relationship though, I hate it when enemies to lovers is done as a total shift in emotional states rather than a confused circling around the ambiguous boundaries between both.
I might not have loved violet and cyrus, but dante and Camilla were by far the stars of the book and stole every scene they were in. as soon as dante was introduced as basically the centre of a tug of war between cyrus and violet I started having beautiful visions of a love triangle but with dante as the centre – I really truly believe that cyrus and violet triangulating their desire through dante would have elevated their relationship and chemistry into Absolute Slay tier AND grounded their rivalry more solidly… AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN REALLY FUNNY!! As for Camilla, being a vain ostentatious let them eat cake type lesbian princess with no interest in responsibility and every interest in material desires is enough TO ME though I did start feeling like we needed to guillotine the monarchy and redistribute some of that wasted wealth to the common people like let’s dial it back a bit ok… Sidenote extremely funny that Camilla and cyrus are like infamous for being sluts, between them they got every woman in the kingdom covered at least twice.
On a personal level the magic system requiring bloodletting was kinda hitting my landmines but that’s a me thing… My final and pettiest complaint is that I just don’t think cyrus is an attractive love interest name 😭 also unrelated to anything I clocked op as an ex fic writer in about 2 sentences. Sometimes you just know…
Anyway even though the dynamic fell flat for me there were nonetheless some banger lines sprinkled in there eg my fave line:
I see endings clearer than beginnings, and I don’t have a heart that could be devoted to anyone.
^ literally slayed the world even though on the established lore this is actually not true as violet explicitly says she’s able to see the past more clearly than the future since it’s already happened lmao. Still what am I gonna do, not appreciate an enjoyable turn of phrase?
DAUGHTER OF THE MOON GODDESS – SUE LYNN TAN
This redefined the meaning of mid for me. Like it’s just the blandest boringest fantasy romance story imaginable written with a very chuuni idea of purple prose (it was giving right click->synonyms->replace with the longest option that comes up), except it’s set in fantasy china instead of fantasy Europe so the window dressing has some pizzazz. Doesn’t make it a good book though!!! I’ve been trying to think of literally anything I enjoyed about this book and have come up empty handed. Every character was cartoonishly one-note and every relationship had the depth of a paper cut. Every second sentence had some kind of simile or metaphor to the point where even I, an avid lover of figurative language and known purple proser, was like ENOUGH. Just say what it is straight up!!! Mostly because they were really boring similes and metaphors so they might as well have not been there, and I truly believe that overuse of figurative language diminishes the meaning and impact of each individual instance.
Op’s idea of imagery is throwing a bunch of adjectives into the sentence which also got tedious to read, I know that describing things in detail is a fantasy convention but they should be good descriptions. Using more complicated words doesn’t automatically make your writing better or more sophisticated like sometimes it is OK to just say “red” and not “vermillion”. There was not a single line that impressed me or even made me laugh, I really spent the entire time reading like 😐. Also op is obsessed with starting sentences with “How” like can we get some uhhh sentence structure variation up in here. Screamed when op deployed “orbs” to describe a character’s eyes in what appeared to be total earnestness and at that point I gave up trying to assess the book generously.
Two story structure gripes: firstly – WAY too much expository montage recapping, not enough concrete real-time action happening. Absolutely egregious to OPEN the book with xingyin delivering a chapter long narrative monologue recounting her childhood and family backstory. That is all lore that should have been revealed in increments throughout the story at pivotal plot-relevant moments, not upended on the reader at the outset when I don’t have any reason to care about her yet. It was so bad I could barely tell when the real-time action actually did start happening and I just think it would have been much more engaging if the story had started with the empress visiting chang’e. Literally just cut everything that came before that!! Secondly – very odd pacing. Totally new plot points would crop up out of nowhere, cue lore dump, cue quest. Gave the book a rather disjointed feeling like we were lurching from Big Event to Big Event with little sense of buildup or denouement.
However! You guys know I can forgive basically any story-related problem so long as the dynamix are good though. but unfortunately none of the hets had any chemistry at all my goddddd I was rooting for nobody to win. I didn’t understand why Liwei was so intensely taken with Xingyin from first sight when their first meeting was the most nothing scene of all time, though I at least could see that Wenzhi’s initial regard came from his admiration of Xingyin’s archery prowess. The love triangle was so annoying (I LITERALLY ENJOY LOVE TRIANGLES USUALLY) especially the way that both the love interests kept getting SOOOOO insanely jealous anytime any other man so much as spoke to her. Can you guys get a fucking grip, that level of insecurity is not attractive or appealing especially when neither of them were actually officially together with Xingyin.
I guess liwei was less offensive overall because I don’t think I could tell you a single personality trait that he has other than being into xingyin for whatever inexplicable reason, and on principle I will always support first loves, except I extremely did not approve of liwei kissing xingyin when she came back from her military campaign as he was already engaged to fengmei at that point. Wenzhi’s personality (inasmuch as he had one) got pretty badly assassinated when his villain reveal happened and I don’t think I approve of that because it felt to me like a cheap and easy way to kill him off as a viable (“””viable””””) romantic prospect. lesser offence than the others but when wenzhi was holding xingyin captive she KEPT accusing him of stealing her stuff as one of the primary sins he had committed which made me cry like girl your priorities… what about all the people he’s killed and is planning to kill 😭 arson murder and jaywalking moment. And the honeypot scene was so stupid and predictable I can’t believe wenzhi fell for that.
As for Xingyin… she was not an effective protag and I did not find her charming or plucky or independent, which i think is what she was supposed to be giving. The more I think about it the more I think she’s nothing, she’s weirdly oblivious in an exasperating way like when she did magic and then was like Wow… was that magic? No it couldn’t possibly be… and then she spent the first quarter of the book being convinced she didn’t have any magic ability despite being the daughter of a goddess (if anything would the natural assumption not be the opposite??). and also her selectively not picking up on Liwei and Wenzhi’s respective gripless jealousy moments and being like omgggg guyssssss what’s wrong… I wonder why they’re acting so strange… Like I love dramatic irony but there’s a difference between implying things that we as the audience pick up on that the pov character doesn’t, and the pov character just coming off as stupid.
Her ideals and motives are incredibly weak – she barely spares a thought for the moon or for her family, which was set up as her primary driving motivation, through the majority of the book and it feels like an afterthought when towards the end she’s like Ohhhh yeah I gotta get my mum pardoned. This would have been so easy to achieve too if the exposition at the start of the book had simply been distributed more evenly or if she had done some mental comparison between her home on the moon and the various places she visited. It’s not even like she’s meant to be the type to be distracted by her romantic drama as she’s explicitly set up to NOT be that, and to largely not notice her love interests’ interest in her, and yet it seems that it’s really the main thing on her mind. Not necessarily unrealistic of her to be preoccupied by romance, just boring and inconsistent. I love characters with strong convictions, and I love characters with no convictions but who know this about themselves – I have no time or patience for characters who are supposed to have strong convictions but display no evidence of this.
I also found a lot of her actions personally unlikeable, particularly in the scene where Liwei tells her about his political engagement to Fengmei for the sake of upholding the alliance between their nations. He could not have made it any clearer that he was basically being forced into it and was only agreeing out of his sense of duty towards his people but she still was being like, I can’t believe you CHOSE to get engaged to another woman this is a BETRAYAL. Is it an understandable reaction? I guess. Doesn’t mean I like it though!! I just think it would have been wayyy more effective and angstily romantic if Xingyin had understood, even if anguished and unwilling to accept it, that Liwei was being held hostage by the circumstances of his birth JUST LIKE XINGYIN HERSELF. Especially as she is also supposed to be struggling with her self-imposed filial duty to rescue her mother vs her growing love for Liwei!!! Instead of lashing out at Liwei and making it seem like he’d done this because he wanted to marry a beautiful noble girl like Fengmei.
Something that annoyed me EXTREMELY MUCH was that Xingyin had a grand total of one (1) positive relationship with another girl who wasn’t already part of her household, and approximately 3 pages was spent on that so there was basically no onscreen development that would have let it earn the Girl BFFs status the book was trying to convince me it had. Like ohhhh you wish you were mu nihuang and xia dong sooooo bad. Almost felt like it was only there so that op could beat the Not Like Other Girls allegations by being like no see she does have a friend who is a girl!!! I guess xingyin was also nice to one of the servants but again they interacted literally twice. Every other woman was depicted as a raging bitch or a vapid nonentity… could not tell you how disappointed I was that she never developed a relationship with Fengmei (or that Fengmei never developed a personality) because they had a really sweet first meeting scene before Xingyin knew who she was, and I think the potential dynamix between them as Liwei’s forbidden true love and Liwei’s political fiancée (and ofc moving past that and returning to that little moment of shared conspiratorial laughter that they began with) could have been soooo juicy especially if they were able to reach some kind of understanding. Like yeah okay I guess Xingyin can resent Fengmei but that’s the boring and obvious route!! Which I think is the key problem with the storytelling overall – just very tired and tropey in an unappetising way, and determined to stay as far away as possible from putting fresh spins on any of the conventions it plays into. Just because everyone is Chinese doesn’t make your story new or interesting!! You’ve still got to pass step 1) write a good story!!!
I know I’ve written a lot in this review, most of it quite critical, but I really don’t think this book is bad, just mid – many of its problems could be easily fixed and it has the potential to be a much better story than it ended up being. I don’t think I care enough to read more from this author though. I will say that the cover art is beautiful. Anyway 1/10 because I didn’t find anything about it personally appealing even though objectively I think it’s not as bad as books I’ve rated higher. But I do think being bad but entertaining is better than being ok but boring. No fave lines, nothing was good enough.
FOURTH WING – REBECCA YARROS
Military academy for dragonriders is two of my favourite tropes in one so I had pretty high hopes going in and they were at least met on that front, I loved the power fantasy of violet growing into her identity as a member of war crimes institutionalised violence school and bonding two dragons and those dragons being super rare and powerful and enacting lethal retribution on the guys who tried to hurt or kill violet and clearly loving her very much. So satisfying!! I fucking love dragons so much it’s unreal. In fact I think there should have been a stronger focus on the dragons and they should have had a bigger presence in the story, especially Tairn and Sgaeyl – felt like I got a pretty good understanding of Andarna’s personality, but not so much the other dragons, which is a shame since they were by far the most compelling part of the novel.
Unfortunately the romance was EXTREMELY hit or miss – I don’t like it when the heroine is aware of her own feelings or attraction, especially in an enemies to lovers context (jez night world is still my gold standard for emotionally dense heroines who don’t realise they’re in love with their nemesis, and recently alice if you could see the sun). Like the lady doth protest too much methinks… I just think it weakens the enemies aspect and my ideal heroine is too preoccupied by some other intensely pursued motive to pay much attention to her feelings anyway. Violet and xaden’s dragons being mated was very funny though and I’m always a fan of forced reluctant proximity (it was more exciting when they were in their enemies stage) esp when their dragons were fucking and that was like sex pollening them. There were a couple of quieter moments between violet and xaden that worked for me but every time they were supposed to be having like supercharged sexual tension I was cringing and looking away and pretending I didn’t see it. But I really loved the scene where violet drops a pen in class and goes to pick it up and xaden’s shadow powers pick it up for her even though he’s on the other side of the room talking to someone else not paying attention to her… except he was paying attention to her after all, and carefully enough to go to the trouble of doing this tiny kind thing for her despite only being obliged to make sure she doesn’t die so that he doesn’t also die :’’’) heartflutteringly romantic.
The love triangle is a stupid fake one where the losing love interest gets character assassinated to make the endgame route more obvious, which pisses me off so much ya authors these days just don’t get how to write a good love triangle where both options are actually interesting characters. All love triangles that aren’t ot3 types should be like cheese in the trap, where the endgame is pretty unassailable but both rival love interests are highly compelling and well written. It is kind of amazing how little dain existed considering he’s supposed to be the rival love interest lmao it’s a shame since I love lawful types who struggle with by-the-books justice vs intuitive justice, and I think the ideological conflict coupled with the military rank hierarchy difference between dain (greater good > loved ones) and xaden (loved ones > greater good) could have been pretty interesting. But even though his single character trait is being obsessed with rules dain’s first action was literally attempting to make violet escape the riders to join the scribes? And the hypocrisy of this is never pointed out so I can only assume it wasn’t intentional… like why did he get mad over violet rules lawyering a technicality (which litr makes no sense if he’s a black letter kind of guy anyway – by his own logic, he should accept that a loophole in the text is a loophole) and also repeatedly prioritise The Rules over violet, but had no problem breaking rules or at the very least skirting around rules to try to protect violet at the beginning. Honestly quite funny of dain to just straight up say that he would pick following the rules over violet. Good writing is when characters directly tell us exactly what their ideals and motivations are. I do think it would have been better if dain’s blackletterism had been framed as prioritising ideals of justice/the world/the greater good which he believes is best achieved by a framework of law and order, instead of as 1800-i-love-the-concept-of-rules which just seems kind of stupid, but op would never have treated dain’s character with that much consideration lest he come off too sympathetic and romantically viable.
Generally I didn’t care for violet, I thought she was inconsistently written and got soooo boring as soon as the romance started happening in earnest because it was literally all she had going on internally, and the STUPID ASS third act conflict pissed me off like xaden literally did spend the entire preceding book warning her that she’d hate and distrust him as soon as she found out who he really was and what he’d done and she kept pressing him to let her in despite his reservations and then when he did she hated and distrusted him and this is never brought up so again I can only assume it wasn’t intentional as I don’t think the book is smart enough to be making some kind of point about it. I’ve already talked about my negative feelings about her lack of any real conflict about being attracted to xaden… like she’s just straight up ogling him in a scene where he’s sparring shirtless and she’s barely even mad about it. I don’t think I can name a driving motivation for her other than being very horny about xaden. Also real two nickels moment with protags of enemies to lovers fantasy books being named violet lol.
I was having trouble taking xaden seriously because of his name dkjfkdjffd like I love x names with a fervour matching any 5th gen boy group company but xaden is just soooo fucking funny… couldn’t stop reading it as *yugioh gx dub vc* Xaden Xmuki. He was also an extremely standard take on a bad boy with heart of gold ya love interest trope but at least his actions therefore had consistency and I was very heart touched at the backstory reveal that he took personal responsibility for the “sins” of every child of a traitor as a trade to save them from execution, I love self sacrifice so much it’s unreal… I wish I could say anything about any other character but they just did not exist. which is such a shame because I thought the fucked up family relationships that the book opened with would have a much stronger presence!! There was some really promising motherdaughter legacy expectation and replacement goldfish anguish but violet’s mum just flattened into such a one-note villain in all of her subsequent appearances. It would have been so much more compelling if she’d acted in a way that had understandable motivations (even if filtered through violet’s limited pov) despite hurting violet, especially since violet grew to love being a rider so her mother was ultimately “”””right””””, but she just seemed cruel and dismissive for no reason.
I really appreciated that violet actually interacted with other characters, unlike xingyin, but this did result in the opposite problem where absolutely nobody among the supporting characters stood out or was memorable except for Liam (my human onepick T______T), and I’m not convinced that wasn’t just my natural positive inclination towards henchmen and prodigies. But I think he had a very solid presence – hardworking ace, undyingly loyal to xaden because he wants to match the sacrifice xaden made for him, reluctant (on violet’s end) bodyguard to kind steadfast friend for violet, very charming hobby of wood carving :’) )’: I liked mira as well and at least her absence from most of the story was justified since she’s a busy working soldier adult. It is amazing how Rhiannon also barely existed as a character even though she was supposed to be violet’s girl best friend and I do think it’s funny that op invested the entire book’s worth of #representation points solely in Rhiannon 😭 like ticking off a checklist. All in all, definitely would have benefited from a smaller ensemble cast.
What else… I didn’t love the writing but there were a few jokes that were funny and I’m not bothered by an informal/modern narration style in a fantasy novel, I do prefer this kind of tone to daughter of the moon goddess’s “orbs”. It did get a bit grating when both the dialogue and narration kept. Writing. Sentences. Like. This. But whatever… I’ve accepted that ya nowadays is all kinda wattpad yume-y in tone, it’s the least of this book’s crimes. Also touched on this above and not to be doing representation discourse but it’s so annoying how ya authors who acknowledge that gay people exist only let their side characters be gay like would it kill you to let your protags experience a twinge of Not Straightness omfg it’s literally as easy as an offhand line about thinking a female instructor is hot or something, god knows violet spends enough time thirsting over various men. Personally I just think it’s unrealistic for characters to be straight so it ruins my immersion, you guys know I’m hetlover9000 but this is strictly premised on both halves of the ship being bisexual.
Overall if I wanted to read about a dark horse heroine going to a military academy and falling in love with her superior officer I would simply pick up the poppy war again. I still had fun though so 5/10, this is the bad but entertaining as opposed to ok but boring book in question.
Fave line:
Xaden’s been stalling to give Tairn and Sgaeyl time to arrive. My heart sinks like a rock, pinning my feet in place. “I will hate you for this.”
“Yeah.” He nods, a flash of pure regret crossing his face as he draws away. “I can live with that.”
OMNISCIENT READER’S VIEWPOINT – SING SHONG
(guy who just finished orv last night) I could not possibly hope to explain my feelings about all 551 chapters of this story in the space of this post but suffice it to say that I cried blew up smiled cried again cried again again. Wow guys. Writing is crazy… reading is crazy… storytelling as a conversation between writer and reader is crazy… And it was all LOVE it’s always been LOVE it will always be LOVE forever and ever. A story that loves you, you who loves a story, love that saves you, love that saves a story, love that saves the world. There’s too much to talk about idk. i know this is vague as hell but i really feel like all i can say atm is *face holding back tears emoji* i enjoyed orv and thought it was good. yoohankim literal narrativeshipping real in the literal text My God.
wait actually i want to say a few words about my ONEPICK OF THE WORLD jung heewon i love... girls who are swords forged from fire and justice and vengeance and loyalty... isn't it crazy how faithfully she endured even though fire is not meant to be something that lasts forever and the hardest blade breaks the easiest since it is wielded the most. because even when she resented kdj and even when she didn't know kdj she still loved him. just how much she fought and withstood more than any person should have to bear... how kdj saved her and how she saved kdj and how in saving each other they were also saved... and all things converged to SALVATION.
Fave lines:
"I can kill all of them if I want." Han Sooyoung saw killing intent for a moment on Yoo Sangah's face and shut her mouth. "Therefore, I can save all of them if I want."
- girls who approach the end still believing in something...........
"Do the ones that can't remember anything…" I stared straight at Yoo Joonghyuk and replied. "…also forget about their sorrow, too?"
- CAT THAT ATE LEMON.PNG
JHW: "Since you started it, you need to see the end properly. Do you know?" // HSY: "It isn't about being forgiven for everything. No matter how the developments flow, we should end the story properly."
- responsibility to see something through to the very end is one of the themes of all time seriously
As if to say, don't forget this wound, please remember her just as he'd remember this wound. // Even if she knew this wouldn't heal her, even if she knew that holding that hand would only inflict her with a greater wound – courage to hold that hand in order to live for one more time.
- to emerge out into life from the other side of unthinkable violence and pain. but this is also the nature of fire
Even if the world was destroyed, even if the scenario barrelled towards tragedy, she'd remain as a writer, always. And that was why it was so much more painful for her. All those different pains yet to be described must still be inside her head even now.
- my genius beautiful girl writer who entrusts herself to the feelings of the moment T_____T
Lee Jihye wordlessly stared at the coin gripped in her hand. Then, slowly tossed it up in the air. It spun around and her palm grasped it again. However, she was unable to open her hand.
"Eonni?"
The sensation of the coin captured in her hand; she couldn't tell whether it was heads or tails, but without a doubt, the coin did exist.
"Are you alright?"
Lee Jihye felt the texture of the coin in her hand for the longest time.
- jihye's moments of uncharacteristic stillness actually bring me to tears
She was not an 'author' like Han Sooyoung, nor was she the 'protagonist' like Yoo Joonghyuk. No, she was Yoo Sangah. Yoo Sangah, who was Kim Dokja's colleague and also his friend.
- BEING COWORKERS IS THE MOST SPECIAL THING IN THE UNIVERSE
I wanted to let Han Sooyoung know of my emotions one more time. To tell her that I could only come this far because of the story you gave me, that I loved your story more than anyone in this world.
- Hey girls did you know that ummm
tragedy is the consequence of man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justlyat the end of everything there is love.