It was a real page turner but I did skip a couple of pages here and there as the descriptions were pretty graphic.

This book deals with a lot of challenging issues of violence against women and children, and I'm struggling with how necessary or healthy it is to engage with, at least for me.

Coming back to properly review this book because I needed a few days to recover from reading something so incredibly perfect, it’s cemented a spot in my top ten of all time - along with Clive Barker’s Books of The Art series, Hiron Enne’s Leech and Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore if that gives you an idea of my tastes. 

Sprawling doesn’t do it justice - the sheer size and scope of the story is so incredibly impressive for an author’s first book. Every character has an opportunity to evolve and grow and in such a way I feel like this should be mandatory reading for those wanting to write. 

It was in all ways the perfect balance of awe inspiring beauty, nail biting dread and bald faced horrific violence - nothing was gratuitous and it all added to the tension of the story. I will say the end of the book feels a little rushed but I could not imagine trying to pull all the threads of this tapestry together with such grace. 

If you like strong female leads, sci-fi, mythology, language, absurdism, terror, violence, revenge, you will love this book. 1000000/10

I’m finding it challenging to rate this book. I did really enjoy the story overall and was glued to the page at several points, but the execution just wasn’t there in the end. There was a lot I liked and a lot that didn’t work for me. Let’s dig in. Spoilers abound.

Technical comments:

The author did a great job of imbuing each POV character with a distinctive voice, despite writing in the third person.  I was impressed with how well these came across. That said, my expectations for the story’s tone and cadence were set by the initial chapters following Carolyn. The shift to other characters was jarring. It took me out of the story so completely that I had a hard time connecting with or accepting some of the wilder plot points. (Steve’s entire escape from the dead one’s house to the vet with Naga being a notable example.) This is an area where I feel that the author’s strengths in giving the characters distinct voices actually did the story a disservice.

On a related note, I h a t e d the way that spoken non-standard English dialects were written. (Thinking mainly of Erwin’s chapters, but also Steve’s in some places.) It’s off-putting to have entire chapters dedicated to eloquently and explicitly describing ritualized child abuse in the same book as characters who say, “lissen,” “ah’ite,” “g’wan,” “daaaayum” (four As, I checked!), and “da fuck.” Like, it felt disrespectful of the gravity of the tale because it did not feel authentic in the least. If this stylistic choice had been pulled off better then, yeah, sure, do it. But the execution was not good and got worse as the book progressed.

Otherwise, the prose was fairly strong and moving. Well, Carolyn’s parts were. I understand why we couldn’t follow her the whole way through, but would that we could’ve. :’)

Some disjointed commentary on plotting and characterization:

I really enjoyed the mythological fantasy elements, like the backstory of the king of the lions and his daughter. They went a long way toward fleshing out the world in which Carolyn, Father, and the other librarians are operating.

I would have liked a bit more from the confrontation/passing of the torch with Father at the end. It felt like he was given a pass on his HORRIFIC abuses of these kids (and, honestly, for what! Carolyn killed them all in the end anyway) and just got to be like, “I’m sorry I tortured you and your friends for 15 years but it was for ~ your greater good ~ ok.” And Carolyn is just like, “Yeah ok have fun in your new universe!”  ????

The pacing was a bit uneven in the middle section of the book and felt almost frenetic by the end. It still mostly worked for me, though. Steve becoming the new sun was a nice and fitting end for his character arc.

only complaint is that the pacing was kinda weird. like the first half was rapid fire everything happening all at once and then it slows down like crazy after

carolyn kills david and brings steve into the library

. i thought all the stuff with the Library was super interesting as well & i would have loved like a list at the front or something of what all the catalogs are..we know abt healing, war, languages, mathematics(?), animals, death/the forgotten lands, time, & like possible timelines (whatever rachel is doing), but like that's just 8!! there are 4 more!!

ok actually wait. 3 hrs out from finishing it i have some more thoughts. mainly . like i said before the other librarians were so interesting and totally underutilized (i mean we only get NAMES for like 7 or 8 of them!!!) and it felt so cheap that

they 100% really did all die (except michael) when the military showed up at mrs mcgillicutty's house. like seriously?? they're all part of the way to being gods but all it takes is a bunch of guns to kill them:/?

and kinda

none of steve's and carolyn's problems were really solved at all except for the ending of the famines and whatnot by her turning him into the sun. idk if a steve epilogue was possible but i would have liked that a lot better than the erwin one we got

and also the narrative sorta justifies all the torture that the father put carolyn and her siblings through at the end. as if there was no other way for

him to choose a successor and then retire??