seastheday's reviews
79 reviews

This is an intricately complex dark academia that’s high fantasy and deals with colonialism. There are four main characters with diverse backgrounds, and to their own notice-  should not really be friends. I say this due to the fact that they are of British (female), Creole (female), Indian (male) & Chinese (male) decent while the story takes place in the 1800’s Great Britain. They all have what naturally, would be the only job for someone of their racial profile at the time- interpreter & researcher in multiple languages. However, the twist in this story is that the use of Silver, when properly used & interpreted in multiple languages correctly can do magic-like things.

The story is reflective and is seen through our unreliable narrator, Robin Swift. His guardian

aka father who pretends to not be his father

only “rescued”

bred and stole him away from his homeland

him from his disease plagued Canton because he was able to read, think & speak in English & Cantonese/Mandarin (forgive me, I cannot remember if he knows both or know one and learned the other).
But our unreliable Robin takes us through his time and learning what it’s like to feel in society but really pushed to the edge and barely accepted. He and his friends of color are each feeling the effects of being anything but white. However, they either dont know the others are having a hard time themselves or they can’t pull themselves from their own paradigms. 
The inability to look outside of their own perspective is pretty much impossible for these brilliant students. It was frustrating and heartbreaking at the same time.

Their inability to shift their paradigm’s made it impossible for them to truly get along. And impossible for white people to understand the effects of their colonialism. 

Their stand at the end & the betrayals & the unexpected support was undeniably heartbreaking. But is it an R.F. Kuang book if the last fifth of the book doesn’t break you?

Somehow it was not YA??? All foreshadowing was largely obvious. Her internal monologue was not subtle. Everything is just given to you character-wise. Plot-wise, the games were confusing. Somehow everything went from over explaining the obvious to having the most convoluted writing to explain a trial. And I hated the main character so much. 

I just couldn’t digest this at this moment. There were lots of characters POV’s and the time kept jumping. Not right now. Maybe later

At no point was I hopeful. At no point did I find joy in a single thing that occurred. It was so difficult to even be happy for a moment for Lenny, it was always so short a period of time & something horrible always happened from it. It made it hard to like the book because I was unable to feel the feelings a moment evoked. Or the moment was SUPPOSED to evoke. 

I loved the towns people. I loved the setting. I hated her father. And honestly, I hated her mother. I know her mother was the one in the DV relationship & those relationships are hard to get out of due to the cycles of abuse. I didn’t blame her for not leaving- that wasn’t my problem with her. It was her character arc / trauma for the book. The glaring issue with Lenny’s mom is that her mom didn’t act like a mom. She treated Lenny like a best friend. So Lenny really had no actual parental roles for the majority of the book. This made Lenny feel like they were equals and that Lenny had to take care of her mom when she was injured or hurting. It was unfair & the entire inner monologue for Lenny had to do with her mom. I think Lenny’s mom was the true villain of this story. After Lenny’s father of course. 

Would I read this again? NO.

Am I glad I read this? NO.

Do I want my time back? YES.

Should others pick this up? ONLY if you understand Domestic violence, abusive/toxic relationships, grooming & parentification. If one is unaware/new to these subjects, some of the story will be lost/not translated. It’s also a failure on the authors part to portray these things well. 

That was a horrendous waste of time. If you want to read about a very drunk, chain smoking, strung out, and dysfunctional group of friends, this is for you. If you don’t really care that the dark academia trope withers off, then this is for you. If you enjoy annoying characters, this is for you. If you only want two short, interesting scenes while everything else is painfully, blandly written, this is for you.

I was incredibly annoyed that Richard worked hard to finagle himself into the Ancient Greek program only to learn nothing about it. Then, for the length of this book, he barely had any interaction with the wacky professor Julian. Julian was set up to be such an interesting character and we barely got any of him. And I couldn’t even buy why someone would

willingly, for no reason be okay to cover up a murder that they had nothing to do with.

 

I hated this. Genuinely. Donna Tartt, ma’am you owe me something. I’m not sure what, because I definitely can’t get that time back. THANK GOODNESS I DIDNT buy this book. 

WHEN THE DARKLING SAID THE VIRAL TIKTOK SOUND, “Fine, make me your villain”, I WAS GAGGED.

Anyway, everyone was correct. Six of Crows was infinitely better. I wanted to reserve my opinion on the series after finishing, but this doesn’t even come close to how incredible SOC was. 

The Netflix series is literally this entire first book- almost scene for scene, I swear. I think it did the book justice. If one of my beloved series was done this well, I’d die happy (fyi SOC was NOT done well)

This YA was not horribly young but it was not written for older YA readers. I mean in the way of simpler foreshadowing and over-explaining. YA is such a broad category & there are YA’s that are incredibly written and are definitely for people on the upper range of YA, such as Cruel Prince. And then the lower range of Prison Healer, where EVERYTHING is explained again and again and again. This is definitely smack in the middle. 

My main gripe with this book was the lack of time. It was utterly confusing how fast things went and how many days everything took. I had no idea how much time was passing. It left me with many questions like how did their messages, missives & intelligence get places so fast? How long does an airship take to cross Ravka? How long is it from Fjirda to Os Kervo / Os Alta? The only time we understood the length of time was when the story found its way to Ketterdam.

Other than that, I really enjoyed this book. I loved how it has crossovers and so much unexpected growth.

However, the ending was incredibly predictable. In every sense for every storyline. It was saddening since the end of Six of Crows had such sastifying, unpredictable endings.
Spoilers below!
I loved this ending to the duology. I wish Nina was able to reconnect in a better way. And she didn’t have last words like I wanted.

I’m also so so excited about the prospect of getting more of Kaz & the crows in the future!!!! I really how she follows through on it. I don’t want more books like The Familiar.

I figured out how the end was going to be very early on. I just wasn’t entirely sure how it was going to get there. I think the twist became obvious

when Lana spoke with the groundskeeper. And the groundskeeper did all she asked too willingly. I think if Lana’s intention was clearer & he ended up deviating from her ask, it would’ve been infinitely more entertaining

.  I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it. It was mediocre at best. Although, it was better than The Maidens. Look

I don’t really know what to say about this book. I didn’t really care for most of the characters. It was crazy how Apollo’s & Aurora’s abusive  behaviors were constantly justified by other characters. This book is aimed at a younger audience, which makes that all the more frightening. Like to see excused abuse and no one ever points out how wrong it is is a dangerous message to give young people. 

I think the plot was confusing more than it was having “crazy twists”. The fact that stories were constantly changed made anything possible for the plot to not make sense at all. I hated this book.

Did the first one feel very juvenile? 

Yes.

Did I need to follow up on the characters?

Also, yes.

I enjoyed my time with it. It’s a fun series that isn’t super serious. I’m glad there’s not really any heavy topics. It’s easy enough to follow while cooking & sleep deprived.