Well, Sarah Beth Durst certainly nailed the brief when she said she wanted to write a book that felt like drinking a hot chocolate. This book has to be the definition of cosy fantasy, and I loved every second of it.
This was so much fun! I feel like, before reading, I'd heard so many mixed reviews and went into it with reasonably low expectations. But I thoroughly enjoyed this story.
I'm devastated to be DNFing a Leigh Bardugo book. But wowweeeee - this was very boring.
I'm in two minds about how I feel about this book. On the one hand, I'm impressed by the scale of the story and by some of the best character development I've ever read. On the other hand, knowing the history and serious allegations against the author has seriously tainted my reading experience. That, and the fact that by the fourth book (as this is a bind up of books 1-4), I found things edged toward tedious.
Well, hello. It's been a while since I've posted anything other than a review - but here we are! Back in the good old days, I used to post regular upcoming release posts, and you know what? I miss doing that.
This was so much better than book two - what a relief!
I wanted to love this more than I did, but I just felt that this was ultimately a bit 'meh'. It's a very fun (and funny) concept, bringing together some classic fantasy tropes with cowboy vibes, and the queerness is delightfully through the roof.
This book was a slooww read - but by the end, I'm pleased that the hard work paid off. This took me quite some time to get through because, to be frank, the first 50% of the book is boring. It's a very slow pace and favours a Tolkien-style of writing where journeying is 80% of the plot.
This was super fun! Even better than expected, and I'm really blown away by the fact that this is translated, it reads as if it were originally written in English. So hats off to the translation work for a start!
Okay, I've got to go 3 stars for this one. In short, this was a great story with a really interesting magic system, but was let down by its unnecessary length. I was tempted to DNF this early on, but was so curious about how the story would develop that I committed to it.
Upside-Down Books 