mayastef's reviews
179 reviews

In the last 4 chapters of this book I violently flip flopped back and forth on my opinion on this book. The endings that I assumed we were moving towards were pissing me off for all different reasons. In the end I wasnt happy with the ending until I read the after portion and even now I'm kinda shmeep shmop on it.

Mal and Alina communicate with each other please for the love of god. Love me some Nikolai. Very solid for a middle book in a trilogy. Theres enough tension building happening without feeling too slow and pointless. 

Its a classic fantasy chosen one arc which slays. I enjoy the vibes but made the mistake of reading six of crows first and nothing can hold a candle to those. Alina lacks a certain ooomph that I usually enjoy in a main character but generally having a good time reading this. 

I think the only reason I stuck to reading this book for 164 pages was that it was a gift, and I wanted so badly to like it, so the gift didn't feel like a waste. The pace is really slow and once I learned there was like 4 books worth of this, I knew in my heart I couldn't finish it. 

This is the gay coming of age john green-core book every bible belt queer youth deserves. I wish a younger me was able to have this book 

The characters are boring and unlikable, any cool characteristics of theirs are smothered under chapters upon chapters of useless rambling on about half baked concepts. I understand that they are exploring complex topics in their research but I feel like it takes pages and pages for the characters to even slightly hint to the reader what they are actually studying. I'm literally in academia now as a researcher at a large research university (one of the most pretentious fields to be in I know we are annoying as shit) and I still find this book too pretentious.

Also as far as I can tell from my reading Ezra is being set up to be the villian which is valid he is kinda a dickhead but his cause is sharing the largest weath of information known to man with the general public and maybe its just the educator in me but why the fuck wouldn't you want as much knowledge as possible to be accessible to as may people as possible. I understand that like blah blah blah magic dangerous than real life knowledge but there's books out there on how too build bombs. I also looked up some spoliers to see if I wanted to keep reading and it seems that Blake sets up two sides of this argument and youre supposed to pick one and its not a true 'villian' type story but also why are you setting up the knowledge for everyone side in such a way that suggests they are the villains.

Long story short I'm a hater. ALSO there's such a weird sexual tension to every interaction but its the frustrating type not the fun type. I don't know how to articulate the tension and why its weird but know its there. 

I enjoyed this book, it was nice to have a more broken down self help type book as opposed to a you’re doing everything wrong and here’s the 47 things you need to do all together perfectly in order to cure yourself. This book is in my personal experience a much more accurate rendition of mental health struggles and how to persevere. It feels like getting advice from a friend not someone who’s job it is to make you better and I personally am much more receptive to that.

My beloved little scrimblos, my little scrunkletons <3. I want more of the crows, but I also think where the book leaves everyone sets them up with the perfect amount of hope and heartbreak. I crave more of this story but I am very satisfied with the pacing of the book and the overall arc of the story. I also know that if I was to get more of the story I probably wouldn't be happy bc I love where everything left off. 

Do you like found family? Do you love a story of being gay and doing crime? Well, have I got the book for you!
I haven't read shadow and bone and understood six of crows just fine! Maybe one day I'll read Shadow and Bone, but from what I've heard on the internet, Six of Crows blows the other books out of the water. It's a banger and I was genuinely offended when it ended. I was reading the ebook, and it showed I was 77% of the way through when I finished the book and I was like WTF???? There were so many book excerpts at the end it threw me off and I was so shook I immediately had to pick up Crooked Kingdom. 

I'm not smart enough for this book/it just wasn't written well enough for me to follow what was happening easily. I know the whole vibe was for it to be a bit weird and out there, but I stand my ground. Also, I read it in physical version, and you flip the book over and start from the back halfway through which is cool and unique but demotivated me in a way I didn't anticipate. Opening up a book that you're halfway through the story of and being only on page 4 was a weird feeling that I didn't like.