I've attempted to read this book three times. Once, I came close to finishing it, but it feels disingenuous to say that, because I did not come "closeI've attempted to read this book three times. Once, I came close to finishing it, but it feels disingenuous to say that, because I did not come "close" to "finishing it" so much as I moved my eyes over the text sequentially until I reached a page that was reasonably close to the final one. Note that I did also attempt to listen to the audiobook, and I couldn't get through that either.
I understand what this book is trying to do. I appreciate the nuanced discussions around identity and colonialism. But those conversations could have taken place in a lecture theatre, or in an academic text, or in an online thinkpiece. In my personal opinion, to which I am entitled, it doesn't work as narrative fiction. The author gets bogged down in this dense, impassable hedge of worldbuilding (which is riddled with inconsistencies; how on earth can an empire this sprawling and technologically advanced hinge on paper mail that is encrypted with poetry? And why are the imago machines not connected to some sort of cloud? That's basic technology that we have today, here on Earth) so much that she forgets to develop her characters beyond one or two basic traits. Even that's being charitable: Mahit has one trait, which is that she is enamoured of Teixcalaan. She wanders through this story like a ghost, formless, merely reacting to stimuli in order to nudge along the treacly plot, which is in itself not even remotely interesting. I am extremely sick of these incredibly phoned-in, poorly-plotted, toothless murder mysteries that have been crowding the market in SFF across the past few years. I love a good murder mystery, but if you're going to write one, please, for the love of god, explore the genre. Read a few thrillers. Look into some true crime. And recall that, in order for such a plot to work, the reader needs to actually care about the characters. Because these bland, joyless, dispirited people chasing ghosts in this clinical, over-explained world did absolutely nothing for me. Three times over.
Fun in places, agonising in others, with an ending like one of those Lord of the Rings movies: endless, fucking endless, filled with impossible stuntsFun in places, agonising in others, with an ending like one of those Lord of the Rings movies: endless, fucking endless, filled with impossible stunts and going through a bitter divorce with physics. There's also the last chapter, which I absolutely could not wrap my head around. What the fuck was going on there.
(I also want to add, because it was something that stuck out to me, and something that bothered me, that Marcus was my favourite character. I really, really liked him. He was barely there, barely spoke, barely had any input due to Gideon arbitrarily hating him, but I really, really liked him and I was so interested in him. I wish this book had been from his point of view. I want to know more about him. I might even read the sequel just for some more insight into him. He had a cool horse and a really interesting power, and I just...loved Marcus. I connected with him, while I didn't connect to any of the other characters in this book.)
You bet your perky little ass I'm going to review this. Don't expect any less of me.
So the thing that really gets on my tits about the Sex and the City movies is that they totally a blow a hole through the conclusion of the TV series,So the thing that really gets on my tits about the Sex and the City movies is that they totally a blow a hole through the conclusion of the TV series, which tied up every single loose end in quite a feat of writing: you've all read and watched those series that end in a black screen and leave the audience furiously hanging (prime example being The Sopranos) and don't pretend you weren't royally cheesed. I know I was.
There's also those series that you wish would end because they've gone too far, we're in way too deep, and the characters have already played through like seven arcs to the point where they're not even characters anymore, they're like fan fiction. You know those series. Like Supernatural or Nip/Tuck. (I loved Nip/Tuck but please don't tell me that you thought the LA seasons were anywhere near as satisfying at those set in Miami. I was mildly interested in the storyline with the girl who tried to poison Joely Richardson, and when Kimber did meth, but that's pretty much it.)
I think the only thing I actually liked about the SATC movies was that Charlotte got pregnant. That was it. I hated that Stanford and Anthony got together because the whole point of their hatred for one another was to subvert the trope where two characters who are gay ALWAYS end up together just because they're gay (also I LOVED Marcus). I hate that Samantha and Smith break up because their relationship defied the idea that being sexually fluid and having a long history of sexual partners means that fidelity is impossible: Samantha found the person who understood her and who she wanted to spend her life with without even trying. What does that say? Stop carving yourself up into a different person just to find love. Stop letting your life revolve around it. It'll come to you. There's also the fact that I'm in love with Smith and I think he's by far the best male SATC character.
I also hate that Steve cheats on Miranda, and basically, why? Why did the writers even do that? Steve would never cheat on Miranda. Steve and Miranda, even when they were dating other people or arguing about that damn puppy or running away from each other on the street, always had eyes for no one but each other. Miranda walked away from Dr. Robert (this dude honestly needed to step back, take a breath, and fucking chill) to be with Steve even after Robert confessed his love. Steve had a serious relationship with Debbie that he immediately gave up to be with Miranda. Yes, things change down the line and people's feelings evolve but Steve and Miranda's relationship went on for years. They were together and apart almost as many times as Carrie and Big were. And yet they always came back to one another. Steve was the making of Miranda in terms of her emotional story arc - while Charlotte's arc was about how perfection is unattainable and sometimes it's the imperfect people who are truly perfect for you, Miranda's was about being strong enough to let other people into your life and to separate being independent from being selfish. It was an incredible piece of character development. But then suddenly Steve blasts out of character and sleeps with someone else? He was always the more committed of the two. Ugh, I could write an 800,000-word thesis on Steve and Miranda!
Carrie and Big are the worst part of the movies because, like I said before, all of the tied ends for them are completely undone. It's debatable whether or not Carrie learned anything over the course of the series, or rather anything as substantial as Charlotte and Miranda. I guess Carrie learns to come to terms with who she is - not the marrying kind, or the mothering kind, and that's okay, because being a woman doesn't mean that you are compelled to have a ring on your finger or a baby to breastfeed. That's cool. Makes sense. Big's development, on the other hand, ran deep: Carrie spent years chasing after him because he was unavailable, when he finally realizes that he's wasting time that he could have spent being happy with Carrie because of his own selfishness, their dynamic flips and he goes after her. He's a selfish commitment-phobe and he realizes this when finally Carrie tells him to fuck off and leave her alone once and for all. For a guy who's been famously unavailable for years, running to Paris to find her was huge. And then. AND THEN THERE WAS THE MOVIE.
What in the fresh hell were the writers thinking by having Big leave Carrie at the altar? Why are Carrie and Big even getting married? A pivotal point was when Carrie threw up over the idea of getting married and then Big understood her: "You're not the marrying kind". Carrie threw a wobbler but deep down she knew that he was right, and that he knew her better than anyone, because Carrie never wanted to be married or have a child and Big embraced that. Big was a fucking jerk for most of the series but you can't deny that he and Carrie were a match made in...not heaven, and not hell, but someplace in between where things fit nicely together. They were a match made in IKEA.
But all of that gets flushed down the shitter with the movies. Big was an interesting character because he was written so that he teetered juuuust on the edge of being hatable, but didn't quite take the plunge. You kinda have to like him because Carrie's so obviously in love with him for the entire show, just like Rachel was in love with Ross from the moment he touched her butt and she laughed at him, even after the beach thing, even after the break thing, even after Emily and the baby and Dermot Mulroney on the balcony. Alas, the movies ham-fistedly tear apart Big's strange, guilty likability and make him the villain of this story. There's even this dumbass attempt to make it Carrie's fault for planning a lavish wedding, even though he didn't object to it, even though she looked beautiful and happy, even though it was just one fucking day and even if he didn't like that the wedding was a "circus" he should have just gritted his teeth and let it be as retribution for all the ways in which he'd stabbed Carrie through her heart in the last ten years. I cry every single time I watch the first movie because it's just so fucking horrible how it goes down. It's not even nostalgic tears or tears like, "oh, this is bad, but it's going to be okay!". It's the kind of tears I cried when I watched Up. Tears of abominable sadness.
This book gives me similar feelings - not that it's sad so I cried until I was licking mascara off my lips, but that it takes the charm and the beauty and the wholesomeness of the last two books and makes something that just barely works. It's not that I hated Isla and the Happily Ever After but did I think it was necessary? No. Did I need to watch as the sweet, intelligent beauty of the last two books was crowned with a volume that's little more than two people crying and fucking and then crying again and then sabotaging their own relationship? No. This is the movie to Lola and Anna's TV series. The only good part was Anna and St. Clair getting engaged, which made me cry because it was sweet, just after Isla and Josh made me cry because they're a pair of idiots who need their noggins knocked together.
I kinda liked Josh in Anna's book, but only in a superficial way. We got a glimpse into Isla, and how she protected Anna when Anna was scrapping with that girl in the dorms. But was there a glimpse of that brave, reserved girl in this book? Nada. Isla, like most of Perkins' heroines, cries constantly. She cries when she eats and when she sleeps and when she goes on dates and when she sits on the roof. If you make a character cry enough, it stops having any kind of impact. I feel like critics would write this about me if my life were a reality TV show.
'This Kiki character is okay, but does she have to keep fucking crying? Make it stop.'
Like the movies butchered SATC's essence of four women going their own ways, finding people they could love but still adoring each other above anyone else, Isla butchered Perkins' prior charming innocence and subtlety and gave us this great bulldozer of running and chasing and snot running down people's faces. It was a clunky melodrama where Anna and Lola's stories were sweet and tentative. I enjoyed the sex positivity and the frankness of the way sex was portrayed but nothing else about Josh and Isla's relationship screamed HEALTHY to me. The whole thing consisted of Isla begrudging Josh's upbringing and Josh sabotaging this fabulous education he's been offered and both of them being so immature that their "love" is doomed to fail.
What I love about Perkins is that she captures the dramatics and the theatrics of young love - at least, she does for Anna and Lola. Their stories were filled with just the right level of melodrama, the writing just deft enough to keep them likeable even as they flopped around doing the stupidest shit imaginable. But Isla's story is like a pantomime and even with all of this sparkle and flair and running around and crying like the world is ending, I was left feeling sort of empty.
My mother says that what she hates about Ross and Emily's relationship in Friends is that they're always running. Always breathless and whirling around and rushing off and being so impulsive that it's not even cute, it's grating. Granted, she would probably rather have root canal than watch a car chase or a fantasy movie, but I get where she's coming from. Isla and Josh are like Ross and Emily. They're like Carrie and Big in the SATC movies. They go a step too far and it fucks up the magical atmosphere and the romance of the stories they were built on.
This is the problem with series finales, I guess. You hear more complaints about middle books, but it's always the finales I dread the most. They either get it or they don't; you either leave the series inspired or disappointed.
My first words when I finished this book were, "So annoyed. What a shit show. Two stars."
I loved Snow Like Ashes. I frickin' loved it. Meira was an awMy first words when I finished this book were, "So annoyed. What a shit show. Two stars."
I loved Snow Like Ashes. I frickin' loved it. Meira was an awesome heroine, Angra was a scary villain, the world-building was cool, the writing was smooth, the story was daring. And I had a huge, stupid, embarrassing crush on Theron. Like, it's just as huge and embarrassing as my crush on Paul from A Thousand Pieces of You. Just as huge and embarrassing as my crush on this Russian girl I used to work with.
So imagine my disdain when this book took the story and Meira and Theron and the fantasy raucousness that was Snow Like Ashes and dumped some sort of, I don't know, turgid inner-city refuse all over it and then laughed in my face. I got blood on this book because my finger has a big cut on it that won't heal, and that blood has not turned brown like dried blood does, but has stayed red like my broken heart. I think the fact that I bled on this book says a lot about my relationship with it.
We have Meira travelling all over the kingdom for...some reason, maybe an alliance and maybe a treaty and maybe because Raasch wanted to "show us" some more world-building that wasn't necessary, and we have some intensely boring Mather chapters - seriously, who asked for a Mather POV? I most certainly did not. Anyone who followed my comments and status updates from Snow Like Ashes knows that Mather and I are like oil and water. He is so bland and so unbelievably convenient and irritating, and any other POV would have been preferable. Nessa could have stayed behind and kept track of Winter. Or maybe Conall, who ended up being one of my favourite characters in this book, despite his abysmal development. In fact, I even liked Conall in Snow Like Ashes. He felt real to me. He interested me. But Mather is the epitome of a character who's filling a slot and that no one asked for.
Even the writing is so much more melodramatic: "They reached Rintiero a few hours before sunset, the seven of them flying off the boat in a swirl of white hair and determination". Are you kidding me? Come on. I know that the author has better words than this in her. Honestly, I'm not surprised that the first words in the acknowledgements were "Sequels are hard". Therein lies the problem; this sequel was too hard. This book really shouldn't have existed - with a little more rounding off and a few tweaks, Snow Like Ashes could have been a bold, brilliant, clean standalone. It could have broken the YA fantasy mould and said, yeah, one book is enough, and you don't need sequels to be great! But I guess this one was obligatory, and that's why it exists? Okaaay.
But it's not just the muddying of the plot, which meanders here and there, unconfined to its own rules, which it breaks constantly (since when does magic fully possess people? What actually is the Decay? You'd think there would have been a concrete explanation for what it is and what it can actually do other than "it's dark". What?) and it's not just that that the thundering climax is a strange blurring of all of these mythological elements that don't make sense, it's the characters, and that holes have been blown through them, so much that they're unrecognizable: Mather's entire existence suddenly revolves around Meira, Sir isn't the strong silent type that he was in SLA but an emotionally dead pushover, and the other refugees - Dendera, Henn, Finn and Allison - fade into the background, thin as a puff of smoke, only cropping up when Meira needs a shoulder to cry on or someone to pick her outfits for her. And then there's Theron. Don't even fucking get me started on Theron.
(view spoiler)[So Theron was supposedly corrupted by Angra's Decay in Abril, and okay, fine, that's why he had a personality transplant, but there are so many tiny moments that are meant to convince the reader that actually he wants to be corrupted, and there's a bad seed in him anyway. At the end, when he chains himself into that cell to let Mather and Meira escape, he screams that he agrees with Angra and Meira explains that it's just his own natural faults exacerbated that made him this traitorous imperialist asshat. Seriously - over and over again, Meira (paraphrasing) says shit like, "I can't leave him to be Angra's puppet...but when he said that totally unforgivable thing just then, I swear it was all Theron" or "Mather is so uncomplicated...and Theron is a lost cause" or "Theron secretly wanted this anyway, no wonder Angra got to him...but it's a shame he's been hijacked like Peeta". Fucking hell, man, I've never seen ship manipulation like it. It's like the author saw that fans liked Theron better than that fucking Mather so decided to totally gatecrash the former and then give the latter this self-serving, woe-is-me, self-indulgent POV so that we'll all fall in love with him. I feel like she loves him, so thinks we all do too, but he's just so painful to read about. I'd rather watch my toenails grow.
Does anybody prefer Mather to Theron at this point? Why would you? What I loved about Theron in SLA was that he was so subversive - so often in YA there's the childhood love interest and then the Jacob who comes along later and it's always the heroine's bland relationship with the former that comes out on top, because he's the one who "gets her vibe". I liked that Meira got sick of waiting around for Mather so moved on and found this kind, sweet, gentle dude who liked books and art and stuff. Theron was fresh, nothing harsh about him, and nothing weak about him either. He and Meira were kindred spirits, both tired of being used as pawns, and the one thing that stuck out to me the most was that Theron didn't seem to have any interest at all in being a prince - he wasn't political. At one point in SLA Meira says she believes that if Theron could get away with spending all of his time reading and painting and writing poetry, he'd never leave his little book nook. Why, then, would somebody like that suddenly become extremely politically savvy and brutal, even with the Decay, even if the Decay does attack the host's most prominent traits? Meira constantly states that the Decay exaggerates and twists the host's strongest beliefs, but why would Theron's strongest beliefs be politics? Surely knowledge, art, books, and words are at his forefront? Meira constantly says that Theron's biggest wish was for everyone in Primoria to have magic and for magical equality, but when has Theron ever said this? He never mentioned this in SLA. I'm pretty sure Theron's biggest wish was to waft around the library and write poetry. He never ever mentioned any interest in magic or politics, and he never discussed his future as king, and he spurned the political marriage to Meira not because he didn't like Meira but because he didn't want a political marriage.
All of this is water under the bridge when you look at the true motive behind Theron becoming this evil big bad. It's just grey enough that you can't really complain about him doing a Gale, because it's apparently "the Decay" but we're told enough times that Theron was basically asking for it because deep down there's badness in him. As if you can ask to have your mind fucked.
Whatever. I'm just mourning the Theron I loved because there was no need for this, and I'm furious that this book did a 180 and looked up at me with big, beseeching eyes and said, "Please love Mather! He's so uncomplicated!" Don't even bother. (hide spoiler)]
The whole Theron thing all ties back to this series' mythology and culture and how it has this weird obsession with blood and birthright; like, your blood determines whether or not you are totally evil or totally good, and there's no leeway with it, except if you're a special snowflake like Ceridwen. (view spoiler)[She did not appeal to me for a number of reasons, one being that she and Jesse bumped uglies and then both wondered why his wife was mad about it. And it was supposed to be so sweet and sad, like how they could never be together, but I don't feel sorry for them, especially not Jesse, who was wearing a fucking ring on his finger. But of course Raelyn, the queen, turns out to be evil anyway so we can't feel sorry for her and the obvious humiliation she must have felt when her husband and father of her three young children wandered off and shagged someone else. (hide spoiler)]
Meira's not a special snowflake because all of the Winterians are inherently good and their motives are never ever questionable. They're kind and blameless and they'll happily trudge down mineshafts and live in doorless shacks while their queen lives in a palace and cries on her eiderdown bed like a Disney princess. They're also a-okay while she throws away their resources on creating flimsy alliances, rather than investing them and using them as exports to build a treasury so that they can pay an actual Winterian army to guard Winter. (The only dude in the whole of Winter who questions this monarchial class divide gets his ass kicked and then changes his mind later even though he was right in the first place.) But if you're from Cordell or Spring you're automatically evil, and if you're from Summer (except special Ceridwen) then you're automatically a slob and if you're from Yakim then you're basically Erudite from Divergent. This book has taken a leaf out of that series anti-intellectual dogma and damned anyone who values education and intellect as shady and Slytherin.
(view spoiler)[Of course, Theron's badness that the Decay latched on to was obviously a hunger for power from his Cordellan blood. Duh. He's from Cordell, so we gotta make him evil, because that's how genetics and ethnicity works! (Nah.) (hide spoiler)]
What's hilarious is that when Meira arrives in Ventralli, she takes a look around and spits that there is no poor district, no slums or homeless, and everything looks clean and nice, and that this is apparently such a bad thing. She looks around and says that she sees Cordell everywhere, and I suppose that's meant to be an insult? Ventralli is apparently shite because it's not Winter, but I'd think that having a kingdom where all of the housing is in good repair, homelessness is pretty much non-existent, and cities are clean and habitable is...good?
I never understood why that was such a problem for her in SLA, when they arrived in Cordell and were all so angry that there were no beggars in the streets or filthy slums. I know that the whole point was that the Winterians were suffering while Cordell was so wealthy, but each kingdom's first priority has to be its interior. I guess it was a different kettle of fish with Cordell, because they were already invested in Season politics and were geographically and politically closer to the Winter-Spring-Autumn conflict, but it makes no sense why Meira would be so furious that the Rhythms all the way across the continent, with whom the Winter-Spring conflict has never had any contact, have not stepped in. It's not politically or financially sane for those uninvolved, separate kingdoms to jump into a costly war. That kind of nonsensical and culturally blind interference is part of what caused so much unrest in the Middle East - the West tangling itself up in problems that it doesn't have any business solving, and only making the situation a thousand times worse. Meira basically rolls up on the doorstep of kingdoms that are on the other side of the continent, that are traditionally nothing to do with any of the Seasons, and randomly asks them for an alliance, giving them nothing at all in return. Someone should have sat her down on the day of her coronation and said, "Kid, the rule is that nobody gives you shit for free." It's a pretty simple rule.
Did I like this book? Meh. Not really. It pissed me off, and what's worse is that it tainted the joy of the first book, which I loved. I truly did love it. And I wanted to love this one too. But it was not to be, was it? Our names were not written in the stars.
Only stellar reviews will convince me to read the last book. As it stands right now? I'm done with this series. Unofficially done....more
**spoiler alert** If good high fantasy is a living body - blood pumping, juices flowing, joints moving, a hundred thousand tiny synapses and capillari**spoiler alert** If good high fantasy is a living body - blood pumping, juices flowing, joints moving, a hundred thousand tiny synapses and capillaries and white blood cells rushing and sparking and knitting together to form a natural machine - then this series is an empty ribcage, browned with age and disrepair. There are no lungs inside it; it doesn't creak and sigh with every nonchalant breath. It's just a pile of bones haunted by the ghosts of what it might have been.
Look, I knew this series would not go out with the sort of bang I enjoy (teehee) but I sort of expected more. What started as sort of a semi-cool concept devolved into another limp quest for magic objects that obviously is solved by the power of love or whatever. Yeah, I know this is high fantasy, but what makes high fantasy relatable and enjoyable is the realism in it. We're dealing with wars and revolutions and tyrants and our world, our real world, has had its fair share of wars and revolutions and tyrants. Those things aren't fantastical, so I expect them to be handled with a little more finesse.
I give this book two stars because of Zoya, and the writing, which was okay. It's not Austen, but it'll do. It's better than The Young Elites which literally made me want to sleep for a year. It was so dead, it felt like ashes. It was so dead, it tried to suck me into the underworld.
Alas, this book was a lacklustre ending to a series that I have already mostly forgotten about. It was kind of fun in the beginning, but grew more and more limp and tasteless, like lettuce that's been sitting out for too long. Actually, that's a good metaphor. Wilted lettuce. It once was crisp and juicy, but now it's a bad taste waiting to happen.
The Good: 1. Alina going full Shane* 2. Nikolai 3. Nikolai's face 4. Nikolai's clothes 5. Everything Nikolai said 6. Everything Nikolai did 7. The last 10%, The Good: 1. Alina going full Shane* 2. Nikolai 3. Nikolai's face 4. Nikolai's clothes 5. Everything Nikolai said 6. Everything Nikolai did 7. The last 10%, in which some stuff actually happened
The Bad: 1. Mal 2. Mal, cause I seriously hate him 3. Alina's vague, confusing magical powers (she has...the power of light? And the Darkling has...the power of darkness? Except darkness is the absence of light so essentially they have exactly the same powers? And I suppose you could say "the Darkling creates darkness" but what would happen if he used his power to remove the darkness he had just created? Would that not...create light?) 4: MAL
The Ugly: 1. How fixated I am with this series and how invested I am in it despite lukewarm pacing and plotting and holes in the world building that are so big you could wheel a giant wooden horse filled with Greek warriors through them
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