ashurredly's reviews
453 reviews

I've read this before and every time, I'm just like "whyyyyy?" But in the end, the magic system is interesting, there's some small funny moments, and the characters are people I want to read about. (Although it bugs me even more this time around that Cassandra gets treated the way she does).

This was very, very good. I liked the writing, I felt like the emotional arc was very well done. Gave it four instead of five stars not because of a flaw with the book itself, I just struggled because it's a painstakingly slow read. That makes sense stylistically! But I almost gave up on it multiple times. (There's probably an analogy there, honestly.)

The first half or so of this book was pretty enjoyable and then around halfway, there starts being a lot of character changes that don't make a lot of sense and don't feel like they've been set up very well. Even though it ends on a cliffhanger, I don't know that I'll read the rest of the series.

Reread. These are comforting and don't make me work very hard and there are lot of them, so I'll probably reread the whole series this year. Trying to do them in chronological instead of publication order, so stopped in the middle of this one to read O Jerusalem. There's one bit in this book about Russell & Holmes' time in Palestine that doesn't show up in O Jerusalem.

ALSO, this time around I saw the foreshadowing of the eventual Russell/Holmes marriage and am much more squicked about it. Probably I'll just pretend that their marriage is for convenience.

I didn't like this one quite as much as the other two. It felt like so many things happened without enough time to explore them or the aftermath.

Two reasons for this rating:

1) It's sooooo slowwww. It's fun for the whole focus to be on Russell and I do enjoy a lot of her wandering about, but slightly less of it would be much better. I forgot that this one has always been one of my least favorites of the series (though maybe I'll revise that during my reread).

2) I knew this is the one where marriage becomes a thing, but it's been years since I read this book and in the others I sort of treat the marriage as a historical convenience. Annoying for lots of reasons, but convenient for legal and social reasons. But this time around I'm super creeped out by the way Russell describes her feelings for Holmes (and the way Holmes talks about Russell at the end). I think in the past I'd basically either missed, blotted out, or not had the same issues with those details (I was much, much younger - early twenties - and my awareness of things like grooming was much lower). In the end, I'll probably write the romance bits of this off as being an odd plot aside (it's less than 10% of the book) and keep headcannoning the marriage as a convenience for the characters and the author.