wardenred's reviews
839 reviews

I don’t often pick up middle grade books, so I always struggle a bit with reviewing them. What if I’m misjudging something because I’m not the target audience and don’t have the correct baseline? But anyway, I definitely had a lot of fun with this one. The titular school is such a fun, whimsical place that gave off a tiny bit of The House in the Cerulean Sea vibe (but from the kids’ perspective) with perhaps a whiff of Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children for good measure. I loved the portrayal of magic as something both beautiful and dangerous, and how a kid’s mental health situation may affect their control, and how the school encourages everyone to grow and experiment and heal if needed. This whole approach is something that really resonates with me and was a joy to read.

However, while I loved how all the themes around magic were handled here and for the most part enjoyed the magic system, I think the way the system itself was laid out turned out a bit confusing. It took me longer than comfortable to remember all of the branches and the differences between them and to start correctly attributing all the same-ish names in my head. It’s not impossible that my attention span’s just not spanning very well these days, but I’m still left with the impression that these parts of the worldbuilding were a bit too convoluted.

Another strong theme in the book is the importance of friendship, and I really liked watching Vin actually make friends. The bond she forges with Gilly, Araminta, and Theo is beautiful, and the way this friendship slowly takes shape and grows is so realistic, with Vin’s abandonment issues, social awkwardness, and anxiety complicating things but never turning into insurmountable obstacles. I felt all the kids were so vividly written and realistic, and it was interesting to see the subtle differences in how they communicated with each other and with the adult characters, or how they dealt with experiences such as anxiety in ways slightly different from how an adult would tackle those but still very recognizable.

I can’t quite decide whether the mystery at the center of the plot is as predictable as I found it, or if it’s just the “not the target audience” case. Regardless, I remained hooked by all the friendship and magic, and overall this has been a heartwarming, exciting read that I would definitely recommend to MG fantasy readers. Especially to kids dealing with anxiety, because I’d sure love to have something like this back when I was one myself!

Oh wow. It’s still early in the year, but I’m already certain this is going to be among my top books of 2025. It’s been such a simultaneously heartbreaking and heartmending experience. I had doubts early on about reading a whole novel in second person, but the author’s style absolutely drew me in. I felt for Will during every little step of their journey, and I’m so happy for the future they’ve won for themself—and also so sad the book is over. 

This is a beautiful and relatable exploration of the scars abuse leaves, and how one might go about healing them, and how the type of hypervigilance and self-reliance you develop in traumatic circumstances may sometimes do you a disservice in healthier situations. I loved how human all the characters are, and how they work through the mistakes some of them make. In that regard, the book really felt like a warm hug, subtly telling or rather showing you, “It’s okay to stumble. A mistake is not the end of the world.”

Every part of Will’s arc feels incredibly authentic, and as a whole the book does a great job painting what it’s like to start figuring out your own life once you’re out of an abusive situation. The instinctive mistrust toward everyone with enough power to influence the course of your existence, the shame-tinged joy of getting things for yourself, the slight unreality of it all, the slow, slow tempo of gradually beginning to relax around well-meaning people and letting them in. The fact that it can be easier to open up to someone new who you know shares specific aspects of your identity and history rather than to someone who’s been there all along, but there’s a gap in your life experiences. How everything is no longer that scary, and that alone is enough to cause stress. If I’m feeling nitpicky, I might say that maybe, just maybe, the way everything Will feared turned out to be the opposite of dangerous was a slight overkill. But damn it, we need optimistic stories, especially when they’re stories focused on young marginalized protagonists, and the book as a whole shows clearly that it made sense for Will to fear what might happen if

police got involved, the fact that it went okay was largely due to the present of other characters—adults willing to wield their privilege to shield them

.

All in all, it was lovely, and I loved everyone in the core cast, and I adore how diverse this book is, the gentle nb/nb love story aspect of it, and all the Dragon Age references.

“I stand naked when I draw. God holds my hand and we sing together.”

This memoir pulled me in from the first page with wonderful prose, as empathetic and musical as Patti Smith’s lyrics and poetry, and then kept my attention with a mixture of personal recollections, reminiscence on the nature of art, and an assortment of anecdotes that illustrate the epoch. At times, I felt a little lost when I didn’t immediately recognize a name or somesuch; this is definitely a book aimed at someone who already has an idea of the musical and art scene of the 70s, and while I’m decently familiar with the music parts, sometimes I had to stop reading and pull up Google. 

Robert Mapplethorpe feels like the true main character, even when he isn’t directly appearing on the page. I don’t think I really fell under the charm of his personality, no matter how much the narrative tried to pull me under and how much I didn’t mind succumbing. But I really liked the depiction of the bond he and Patti shared, how tightly entwined their lives remained even as their relationship changed from lovers to friends to something family-like in ways that defy strict categorization. I think what they shared is as close as it gets to finding a soulmate.

I really enjoyed how the book was structured, the narrative kind of growing denser and more expansive as it progressed. First we get the daily existence of someone striving to find something *more*, something that will give their life meaning. Then comes the part about the young starving artists that feels both freeing and a tiny bit claustrophobic, that endless juxtaposition of unleashed creativity and struggling in small apartments with limited funds. And then by the time we get close to the Chelsea Hotel times, more and more actors keep entering the stage, and the kaleidoscope of names and events grows and grows, sweeping you away. 

When it comes to flaws, I guess I didn’t really like how much the author put Robert on the pedestal. She didn’t exactly shy away from depicting his flaws, but she always hurried to make excuses for him or to downplay the extent of the objectively shitty things he did, like

initiating sex when he knew he had an actively symptomatic STI

. I can’t exactly fault her for it, given how important this man was for her and how much his loss hurt her. It’s kind of hard to be critical of someone in these circumstances! But still, I think the reason he was borderline my least favorite person to read about here was that the writing was pushing me to adore him no matter what, and I got kind of contrary. 

This book and I had a bit of a rocky start. Normally, I really appreciate beginnings like it has: the kind where instead of easing you into the setting, the author just starts off describing/explaining exactly as much as the POV character native to the setting would care to linger on and trusts the reader to make sense of things as they go along. I find this approach fun and immersive, and I don’t mind feeling a little lost for the first few pages. In this case, though, I felt lost a bit longer than was comfortable. I think it was because of the nature of the events the first chapter or two focuses on. It’s not very clear which parts are the baseline “normal” here, which events stand out but aren’t wholly unexpected for characters in these positions, and which parts are completely out of the ordinary—because the ordinary hasn’t been established yet. Without having that understanding, I couldn’t judge the stakes or fully grasp the significance of the characters’ choices.

Gradually, though, things got a lot more exciting, especially due to more moving around the very exciting city and more exposure to the magic system that is definitely the strongest point of the book. It’s a hard magic system, and it’s kind of layered in that sense: there is a specific rigid set of rules, there is the MC who intuitively breaks some of them, and then there are the actual rules behind the rules that he does in fact intuitively follow. I really enjoyed exploring the whole magical aspect of the world, both the acts of alchemy and the interactions with other dimensions with all their denizens and alchemical ingredients and wonders. I also really enjoyed the interactions between the magic and the society structure/class issues. There were a bunch of small side plot threads focused on it all that were really interesting to follow.

The characters were likable enough, but kind of lacked depth. They did have clear goals and mostly clear motivations, but I felt like a lot of the time their “screen time” was more built around what they can do/what skills they possess rather than who they are and what’s important to them. My favorite is definitely Zagiri; her arc is a bit stereotypical, but she’s got a really fun voice and personality and I really enjoyed hanging out with her. Siyon, the MC, initially hooked me with his thirst for knowledge that he couldn’t realize because of the social constraints, but as the story progressed, I couldn’t fully retain my interest in him as a fictional person as he felt more like a plot devise all too often.

In big part, that’s because the plot events escalated so quickly. On one hand, the events were really exciting and, vibes-vise, kind of reminded me of the Tarot Sequence books that I love very much. On the other hand, Rune from the Tarot Sequence starts off in a position where it’s completely understandable why he’d go toe to toe with the movers and shakers of his world. With Siyon, all those high-octane plot points with the Demon Queen and such didn’t feel like such a natural progression of events. Perhaps if the journey he undertakes here was spread over two-three books, the stakes escalated more gradually, etc, there would be less sense of disconnect. That would also provide more opportunities to explore the setting with that awesome magic system, because really, with the turns the plot takes here, it feels like we’ve jumped straight from the basics to the very top, missing out on all the cool bits in the middle.

I suspect I would have enjoyed this one even more if I were a Trekkie (I know enough of Star Trek to grasp the core concepts, but I’ve always been more of a Babylon 5 person with a bit of Farscape on the side). As it was, I definitely found it easy to grasp the core concepts, but I kept feeling, especially in the latter half of the story, that there might be a lot of references that I was missing out on. Or maybe i was overthinking. That’s possible, too.

Anyway, even with limited knowledge of the source of satire, I did enjoy it a lot. A lot of the dialogue is simply priceless—I kept chuckling around as I read, even though I wouldn’t call the writing outright comical. Rather, wry and quirky, and that’s the kind of humor  that often gets me the most when done well. I also really liked how most of it was structured (except for the parts I lowkey hated—more on that later). There was this sly, steady build-up to the big meta revelation that made me completely forget what was coming even though I was aware of this aspect of the book going in. I was just so caught up in the weirdness of the ship and all the quirkiness and how the characters interacted. The prose style took a tiny bit of getting used to, but overall, the story pulled me in fast. The mix of adventure, mystery, and that “story about a story” aspect never stopped being entertaining.

My one gripe with the book is the ending.

I kind of wish it ended with chapter 23, but without its last paragraph. Even the full version of chapter 23 wouldn’t be *too* bad. I mean, it would be a truly terrible wtf moment, but it would also be kind of in line with the metafiction part of it all, and at least it would be a memorable last paragraph. But the entire (tiny) chapter 24 being basically AHAHA JUST KIDDING was annoying and created a weird sense of ambiguity—I now legit have no idea how it ended, if I should trust that one paragraph or the JUST KIDDING chapter, and it frustrates me. And the three codas that came afterward, while one of them did contain some fun musings about writer’s block and the like, added next to nothing to the story itself.

All in all, up until the very ending I was thoroughly entertained, and I’m definitely seeing why my friends kept insisting I read something by John Scalzi. His brand of wit appeals to me a lot, and I intend to pick up more of his works later in the year.

I’ve picked this book practically at random and without much active memory of what went on in the first part of the series, but the early chapters did a great job drawing me back into this secretive, magical version of London. I think I’ve enjoyed this second installment more, for a variety of reasons, not least of them being that this time I went in knowing what to expect: an urban fantasy novel with romantic queer subplots on the side, not a romance in an urban fantasy setting. But also, I think there’s a much better balance here between action, mystery, and character-focused moments. Also, I’m kind of a sucker for stories about the MC’s dark past catching up to them and for “magic-induced descent into madness” narratives (listen, I’m a lovecraftian horror at heart). So this book definitely delivered.

I enjoyed a slightly deeper dive into the worldbuilding, learning more about latents and their tricks and all the bad ways in which humans handle this. The danger Dom had been in throughout the book because of the failed competency test felt pressing and palpable, the serial killer mystery plot was exciting, and I can’t imagine not picking up the third novel now because damn, that cliffhanger is simply unfair. I need to know what happens next. Will Kempthorne get what he wants this time, and how? How is Dom going to fare where he is? Which things that Kage says and does are true and which are lying lies? Yup, I definitely will be picking up the next one soon.

The love triangle keeps being very, ah, triangular—in the sense that there remains a fair degree of uncertainty on which love interest is supposed to be the “true” one, though I think my money’s on Kempthorne at this point. The chemistry there is just so much stronger, now that the situation between him and Dom has gained more layers, and Dom’s attraction feels more genuine. With Kage, it felt like he was actively talking himself into giving this a chance to be more than sex; with Kempthorne, he was constantly talking himself out of acting on the attraction. The latter’s definitely more promising.

All in all, a fun, tense, fast-paced urban fantasy romp that hits all the classic beats for the genre and makes it very gay.

I think I might be genuinely too old for this type of YA. You know, the kind where it’s all about feeling not quite right in your skin, and then figuring out why, and then trying to decide what to do about it, and where you hope your life to lead you, and how to go about the obstacles that stand in your way (which often involve your parents). I love that these books exist, especially the diverse, queer ones. I wish they existed within my reach when I was the protagonists’ age. Looking back at those times, and then at these books, I can definitely relate in that “yeah, been there” way. But at this point, to remain truly invested, I really need something else to be happening around all the coming of age to stay focused and invested. 

In this book, there wasn’t much in the way of something else. I definitely enjoyed learning more about queer history and Chinese American culture and the surrounding politics. The parts based around the titular club were fun and immersive, although the girls’ first trip to the club took place way later in the book than I expected and it generally played a smaller part than the cover, title, and blurb all led me to believe. The writing flowed really well. Lily is a compelling, fully realized protagonist, Kath is a less richly written but nonetheless lovable love interest, and there are a lot of poignant moments that really touched me. And all of that was just really, really steeped in that specific coming of age arc, which is absolutely not a bad thing! Focused stories like this are great objectively, for the right audience. It’s just that I’m not really it.

In terms of weaknesses, it might be strange to say so of a 400+ pages book, but I wish it was longer. Over the first 75% or so I got used to the slow, stead, thorough storytelling, and when the pacing suddenly sped up in the last section, it took me aback a bit. I feel like the end of the last chapter and the epilogue could easily be expanded in a separate multi-chapter part. It was strange to see those final crucial steps of Lily’s arc so condensed, and it contrasted with the flow of the rest of the book a lot. Despite that, the very ending brought a smile to my face, and I generally liked how the story wrapped up. I would just prefer it if it was less rushed.

For the first 25% or so, this was shaping to be close to a five-star read for me. I definitely took note of the writing being rough around the edges and how transparently beat after beat got lifted from the most prominent books in the genre. But there was so much soul here, so much emotion, and Zetian was so relatable in her all-consuming anger. For as long as she had that very specific first goal in front of her and pushed toward with all the force of that anger, I was absolutely hooked.

Unfortunately, past that mark the story steadily began to meander and loose its footing. I didn’t so much have problems with what was on the page as with what was missing. The worldbuilding was solid when it came to how the giant mechas and the fighters’ energies operate, but everything else? I definitely have more questions than answers. The central theme of the novel is the oppression of women, with all the attitudes around it largely lifted wholesale from history and dropped into a technologically advanced, futuristic setting with magic without changing shape much. And like, please don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m not buying extreme levels of misogyny in an advanced setting. I mean, we all literally live in one, and I’m pretty conscious of what’s going on around me. But the specific shapes oppression takes tend to change and shift through the ages. Between the technologies, the reasonably well-understood magic, the war history, etc, it is hard to imagine that nothing about the society’s attitudes would fluctuate.

Then there’s the war against the giant alien things that is supposedly at the heart of the story, except the way it is presented, it doesn’t feel like a battle for survival. It’s just something that happens so that the evil men in charge can, a) entertain the masses with endless violent livestreams a-la Hunger Games (except without the internally consistent underlying reasoning the actual Hunger Games had), and b) kill and oppress women. If this is an ongoing struggle for survival and safety, it is very strange of the people in charge to literally go, “Well, we need to fight it in a way that doesn’t damage the fragile male egos and doesn’t give a single woman a boost of confidence, even if it means not using our resources to the fullest potential. This is very important. More so than our actual continued existence.” This is… not how these things happen. These things, to be realistic, should be more complex, with a focus on the war commandment achieving maximum efficiency on the battlefield with the resources they have, including training women with high spirit pressure as pilots in their own right, and the political leaders figuring out the mental gymnastics they need to teach the masses for that to keep co-existing with the biases they’re interested in keeping—and to be ready for some things to change shape while keeping their toxic essence that’s very much worse raging against.

Of course, I do acknowledge that the MC is a teenager in highly specific circumstances, and she simply may not see how the larger world functions. But that’s where my other problem lies: while I have no problem with Zetian being an unreliable narrator who is caught up in her own experiences and emotions and the limited information she has, I don’t think the narrative does a good enough job of treating her as one. On the contrary, it often feels like the book is trying to present the protagonist’s truth as the One Actual Truth, and I think the book grows weaker for that. It would have been great to have more layers to the world and the characters surrounding Zetian, to have them all display traits, qualities, etc that don’t neatly tie into Zetian’s narrative. It’s a tricky thing to achieve for sure when you’re writing in first person POV and your protagonist is an angry teenager, and I empathize with the difficulty of the task, but the absence of these layers kind of made the story start falling apart for me at some point.

What still kept me reading, though, was that anger that I keep mentioning—so relatable and so well-portrayed. I’ve seen reviews that mentioned how it’s strange that Zetian is so angry at the patriarchy yet doesn’t bond with the women around her, instead looking down on them. And I absolutely get where this opinion is coming from, but also, the way I see it, she’s in this place where she’s just so terribly angry at the oppression. She explicitly recognizes that other women—like her grandmother who broke her feet in the name of disabling beauty standards, or her mother who’s been brought down by her marriage yet considers it a pinnacle of happiness to see her daughter also married of, or the girls who act content with their lot in life—are victims of the system she hates. But the ugly thing about systems of oppression is that they turn their victims into accomplices, and when you get infuriated enough at the system, you turn your rage on everyone who upholds it, whether they do it because they want to, because they can, or because the system itself makes them to do. You just rage and want to burn the entire system down. It’s not fair. It’s not just. It’s how it is. I’ve spent almost three years feeling that type of anger every waking moment, even if it’s aimed at a different sort of evil, and it’s been incredibly validating to read a book full of it. I feel seen. I also feel both sad and happy that I don’t have a magical mecha.

We are once again leaving Widdershins, this time to go across the globe, and I’m beginning to sense a pattern here: one book in the city, one book on an adventure elsewhere. I’m curious to see if it’s going to be upheld throughout the series. The change of scenery this time was pretty fun, reminding me of that Relic Hunter tv show I used to love as a kid, except make it lovecraftian. I admit I have some doubts about the level of research that went into the setting, but there are some fun details, and it’s internally consistent, and hey, we’re here on an adventure.

Whyborne continues to grow on me; I think it’s a combination of his character development and my getting used to certain peculiarities of his thinking. It’s been amusing to notice how off his perceptions are sometimes not just about what other people around him may be thinking and feeling, but about what’s going on in his own head, too. “This spell hasn’t been working out, but today I am feeling very calm and certain I can nail it. DAMN IT, HOW COULD CHRISTINE EXPECT THIS OF ME. I am feeling very calm and focused.” Lol, right.

Speaking of Christine, I really loved how much she got to shine in this book, and the overall shape of her arc so far. She steadfastly remembers my very favorite character, and I love how she never feels like a third wheel alongside the main couple. In fact, sometimes I get the feeling that in the long run, she’s the glue that is keeping this little found family together, because like… where would Whyborne be without someone to talk sense into him now and then? Or Griffin without someone to call him out at certain occasions? It’s also nice to be seeing her getting a dose of her own personal happiness—I hope it works out!

What I didn’t really love about this book was the villain. Or rather, I liked how parts of the deal were handled—I largely called what was happening super early on, but then let the author lull me into a false sense of security and was genuinely surprised by the reveal. But honestly,

Daphne

was done so dirty by the story.

I appreciate that there were some attempts at compassion re: the abuse she suffered and the situation it drove her into, but they were rather weak and unconvincing for me. She deserved better, and this whole topic deserve much better, and I wish half the care that this series channels into empathizing with the male character’s suffering went into this plotline.

This is really a big grip I have with this book.

Outside of that, though, all the adventuring and mystery-solving was fun, I liked that Whyborne got to geek out properly about languages, I love his friendship with Christine, and I wonder what’s going to happen to his arc, the plot, and his relationship with Griffin now that he’s made a certain decision at the end of the story. Also, there was that hint about a potential secret concerning him that is just so intriguing??? I immediately developed a theory once it was dropped, and then was like, “Hang on, if I turn out to be correct, I really wish this would’ve been foreshadowed since book 1,” and then I realized that the theory I’m having has in fact been foreshadowed since book 1, so now I can’t wait to know if I’m right or wrong!

I tried to persevere with this one, but when I asked myself why I wanted to continue, I couldn't really find an answer. The characters are fun enough, but over 100 pages in, I can't tell you what the book is really about. There are some murders going on, and some of the characters are vaguely interested in that, but how does it all tie together? It's like a bunch of different books loosely tied together, or maybe just a bunch of backstories/introductions that are going on and on and on. And if my impression from skimming forward to random points is correct, it looks like all the characters and storylines are going to come together only at around 70% (please note this is a 500-pages book). That's... kind of discouraging.

I did like what I've seen from the characters, in particular what I've seen of Vehan and Aurelian (I tend to like these prince and bodyguard dynamics, and they also both seem generally fun and compelling), and I'm generally very here for all-queer casts and faerie-focused urban fantasies. But the way it's structured just makes it really hard to focus on anything for me.