I really enjoyed it. I appreciated the world building that went into the setting, and I like the characters. The cats were really a stand out part of the book for me.

It was good. I've been reading epic novels. So something under the 1800 page count was refreshing.

It almost seemed a bit anticlimactic. The dealing with the main villain. The end of the book was fantastic however.

Having just finished the second book in the series, I'm somewhat struck by the sheer length of these books.

Sometimes it feels like the story almost drags a bit, but it's not for lack of action. I think it's something different that I'm unable to put my finger on.

The characters are rich and three dimensional and have flaws. The 'villains' are just the right mix of dislikeable and relatable.

Still, things seemed to move along a little slow.

You know, it was pretty good, bouncing between the stories. I was invested in the way that the cosmology worked. The ending lacked something, but I can't say what.

Today, this is my "read it before" book. I've been thinking about trying to do one old review coupled with a review for a book I've just finished.

Let me start by saying that the fiction in the book was still good. The story was there, and I thought that it certainly held water.

My issue was with the structure and writing. Maybe the way that the fiction was delivered.

It wasn't the footnotes. I'm a fan of footnotes for the most part, having cut my teeth on Terry Pratchett books. Those books are usually more "Tee hee! I must see what quip follows!" rather than enriching the experience as was done here.

For me, the latter half of the book became a hard, dogged march through the pages. Everything wandered around, and it just felt like nothing got done. Ever.

Okay, not true. There were rare moments when things got done that made me excited that I had sat through enough of it that it was going to pick up, and then it didn't.

I felt like I was told a lot of things rather than shown them, but even then, a great deal of it still felt like the scene in Austin Powers where he's going to run down the guy with the steamroller.

Bah. Just not my cuppa. However! Maybe it's yours? If you're into the kind of 1800s stroll through an oil painting book, but you want some crazy magic/raven king action thrown into your oil paintings...

(Note to self. Take up buying 1800s oil paintings in thrift shops and adding the raven king and thistledown hair men to them...)

Finished the Cormorant today. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Chuck's writing kept my brain sizzling with the usual activity of trying to predict where things are going to go.

I found the treatment that the setting gives to fate, destiny and the like quite refreshing, with the main character becoming less reactive to her situation and taking control.

There's a good amount of wrestling with whether she's actually doing the right thing or not by taking more control of things, and I feel that it reveals a lot about the character and gives her a deeper more rich feel than she had before.

Honestly, if you're reading this review, then you're probably pretty far into the book series already, and if it wasn't for you, you probably didn't make it through book one. So maybe I'm preaching to the choir, but I really enjoy the technical style that Chuck Wendig uses. Vivid imagery, combined with what feels like a convoluted plot (But isn't, at the same time, weird I know,) makes for a pretty fantastic read.

I fully recommend this to readers of the series, and to newcomers... I recommend starting with book one. What's wrong with you.

You know, it wasn't a bad book. i enjoyed the read, but it wasn't as strong of an offering as either of the first two books. I found that the jump back and forth between the two stories felt more like they were just running two separate plots concurrently, rather than actually tying them together. I appreciated them as both distinct stories, but it didn't have as much tieback and forth as the previous ones did, which is part of the reason I enjoyed the prior two as much as I did.

I liked it, more than oss, about the same as aoh. Then again I'm a big fan of comeuppance. I like nothing more than seeing a long term villain get theirs. which in this book felt like more of a "continued in part two"