interesting start but the plot just devolved by 70% and got worse before ending with smut so everyone would forget about the half-assed mystery and Vampyre lore that was teased but then left to rot just like the rest of the story and characters lol

Thank you NetGalley and Orbit books for an ARC!

The profound disappointment I had with this book is really hard to articulate. It is a shallow addition to the "isekai'd into a book" genre that was made popular by Korean webnovels/manwhas. It's advertised as an adult novel but it's very YA coded, from the humor level, the choice in dialogue, to the character motivations. I suppose it could be adult, but very cringe adult - it goes too far to be camp. Anyway I guess the easier way for me to get thoughts out would be to make a list instead of rant.

Pros:

- The last 3 or so chapters. It actually became serious! No one mentioned how big Rae's tits are (a miracle!).

- Marius and The Cobra. Actually I think the entire novel should have been about them considering they were the most rounded, provoking, and sympathetic characters in the entire book.

- I did like Rae's real life background (before coming to book world), her motivations, illness, and sisterly love and frustrations were tragic, gorgeous, and you can tell it was extremely personal to the author. I wish it had actually translated into Rahela post-transmigration beyond a few moments of "I know what pain is" and "everyone betrays you when you're about to die" thoughts.

Cons:

-The humor is more on the younger side; things like 'poor little meow-meow' (probably the worst offender), naming a snake Victoria Broccoli (ALSO NOBODY CARES THAT THE SNAKE DIED? rude.), a lot of modern slang thrown around that no one for the life of anything ever bats an eye at despite having no idea what the fuck it means.

- Also in the humor category but deserves its own bullet point: the constant talk about Rahela's boobs and how HUGE they apparently are, and how CURVY she is and how much all that must WEIGH. In fact the beginning chapters insinuate that curvy = fat in prettier words. I was so tired of reading about Rae's boobs (she NAMES THEM), that not only was it not funny after - ok it was never funny - but when it started in on the idea that women built voluptuously were always seen in a specific, adulterous light, I no longer could bring myself to care because Rae spent 4 chapters falling over from "being top heavy". Gross.

- None of the MCs are actually villains; or evil. Surprise! More like social outcasts, but rich ones so they can't be tossed to the curb of court, you know! Of course it does that flip floppy thing where the evil one is actually the "hero" of the story - there's also a sociopath, but that's like saying sociopathy is innately evil, so nah to that. But Rae walking in and saying "let's be evil" then commences to do.... extremely non-evil things, is lowkey laughable.

- The ballroom scene where they break out into a musical as a "distraction". I did not know I could possess so much secondhand embarrassment in my body until that moment. Imagine: two people singing acapella, in a huge ballroom full of people who begin chanting (how can you even hear them by this point?), a lady who 20 pages ago kept tipping over because her tits were "too heavy" is suddenly doing hand springs and landing on people's shoulders? I just - I cannot suspend my disbelief that far. In fact that scene broke my disbelief so wide open that I had to beg my friends and family to convince me to not DNF and see it through to the end like a good little soldier.

Anyway, I would like an explanation as to why Rahela gets stabbed in the face in the middle of the book where she saves Lia and herself from assassins, and it says (twice) her face is torn open and bleeding and so forth, but there is no mention of it again afterwards - not even a scar! Wow!

I'm really unsure how I feel about this one. The black-market art crime and antique aspect of it was really interesting. The murder mystery side of it however. . . well, not so much. I don't know, the events of Cairo and Freya's "mysterious" (only because it takes like half the book for her to actually go into a flashback chapter to explain it) past didn't really interest me as much as I feel it would've if there felt like there had been more immediate consequences - and this considering there was a murderer running about the entire book.

Also while I was sympathetic to Freya, I don't really think she had that much development. The fact that at the end of the book she didn't tell her shitty ex-husband to fuck off when he started berating her was like gurl.

For the audiobook, though, I think it made it harder for me to enjoy because it was near impossible to tell when Freya was speaking or having some internal dialogue (of which she has A LOT and FREQUENTLY), so I kept getting confused or surprised when other characters responded/didn't respond to her.

i love mercedes lackey's character so much and i would die for vanyel but he'd probably die for me first bc he's just like that ughhh. anyway the valdemar books are nostalgia on top of nostalgia and i live off it :)

it has such great, dry humor. it's easy to get invested in the plot and MC is a high-functioning idiot most of the book, but it's nice that everyone tells her that to her face lol. the romance is meh and clinical at best, but it doesn't detract too much from the overall book

this is both afrofuturism and contemporary scifi all mashed together in a compelling story. it has fantastic disability rep (MC is paraplegic), and it questions over and over if science goes too far -- or not far enough. and the subversion of expectations at the end was the cherry on top. i loved it a lot.

this one is so cute and imaginative. the magic system is unique in its own right, the slowburn romance feels more like natural progression than anything, and to be honest this was one of my favorite reads of 2024. the only fault it has is that book 2 isn't out at the time of my reading it LOL.

Honestly I liked this book, but your review is so relatable when it comes to school reading as a teen. 😂

it was fun genre scifi romance. there was no 3rd act break-up so immediately it became the best kind of romance for me lol

haunted titanic in space. sign me UP. i enjoyed the mystery of this, even though it turned out to be more on the mundane side. and though there is a... rather large chunk of the narrative that all characters forgot/died during, i found that i really didn't need it to feel satisfaction in the ending. plus MC was great to follow.